Maleke's revolution of joy

A tender meditation on care, memory and materiality, this artist's work invites us to slow down and feel the soul

- Lesego Chepape

A few days after returning from a rain-soaked National Arts Festival in Makhanda, I sat down for a reflective conversation with multidisciplinary artist Nyakallo Maleke — whose quietly magnetic exhibition To Teach in Ways That Teach Us to Take Care of the Soul left an impression on me.

The show, in its title and form, invites viewers not only to look but to participate, to make, to reflect and to feel.

Our phone conversation was a gentle unravelling of process, philosophy and personal memory. Maleke, who had just returned from Makhanda herself, was recovering from the whirlwind that often comes with installing and presenting a major body of work: “I was exhausted,” she laughed, “and I’m still recovering.” Yet, her voice was clear, grounded and generously open.

“The title comes from a book by American writer bell hooks,” Maleke tells me as we begin our conversation about her exhibition. It’s a long, lyrical title, one that lingers and, like much of Maleke’s work, it’s not interested in shortcuts or summaries. It asks for your attention, your patience and your willingness to feel.

The book she references explores alternative approaches to education. It offers a way of learning that emerges not through rigid systems but through life, through vulnerability, through care and experience.

“Hooks draws from thinkers like Paulo Freire,” Maleke continues, “who wrote about education for the oppressed. I’m drawn to both of them because I want to contribute to new modes of learning, ones that centre lived experience.”

This emphasis on the soul, on feeling, remembering and making isn’t just conceptual in Maleke’s practice. It is embedded in the materials she uses: baking paper, cardboard, thread, wax, that carry a sense of home, of slowness and process.

They don’t shout. They don’t demand. They invite.

In this particular body of work, Maleke describes returning to the beginning of her drawing practice.