Latest news with #Makhanda
The Herald
2 hours ago
- Politics
- The Herald
Frustrated Makhanda residents claim vacant municipal land to build homes
Frustrated by years of empty promises and stalled housing developments, hundreds of Makhanda residents have taken matters into their own hands, illegally demarcating vacant municipal land for their own use. Residents blocked the N2 towards Qonce and the R67 that runs along the demarcated area on Sunday and Monday, burning barricades made of tyres and debris. The Makana municipality was preparing to file a court application to interdict the residents from occupying the land zoned for commercial use. Police used stun grenades to disperse residents who had gathered on the field that runs along the R67 on Sunday and again on Monday to ease traffic congestion. The protesters then moved to Joza township where they blocked intersections of taxi routes until early evening on Monday. On Sunday, hundreds of residents gathered on the field known as eGolfini [old golf course] on the R67 and demarcated the land using poles, sticks, rocks and building material. For many years, the land has been used for initiation schools for Xhosa boys transitioning into manhood. Dozens of cars lined up along the road behind Extension 5 and the Eluxolweni communities when the drama took place. Community leader Simphiwe Mdluli said elderly people and the majority of the working class in Makhanda lived in back yards or were renting because they did not qualify for bonds. 'There is no new housing project on the cards, while the municipality has previously promised to commence with phase two of the old Extension 10 housing development,' he said. 'It's been years with nothing being said, hence the community identified unused land for occupation while they wait for the municipality because we are tired of this incompetent municipality.' Mdluli said elderly people had joined the cause because during the first phase of the Extension 10 development, people who did not qualify allegedly got houses and more than one person in one family had benefited. 'If you checked title deeds in Extension 10 you'd find that one person [allegedly] owns three houses and this is why we can't discuss this any further but just want land so we can erect our structures.' Mdluli said the community would make Makhanda ungovernable until their concerns were addressed. An Extension 5 resident, who did not want to be named, said an informal settlement near bond houses was a disaster waiting to happen. 'I know many people who are understandably desperate for houses will disagree with this but we can't be paying millions for our houses and live next to an informal settlement; this will devalue our properties,' the resident said. 'Looking at socioeconomic conditions of this town and the high unemployment rate, a combination of a community of haves and have-nots will develop and that will lead to violence, crime and intolerance. 'The municipality is correct to stop it but it has a responsibility to hear the people and come up with a solution for their valid complaints.' Municipal spokesperson Anele Mjekula confirmed they were preparing court documents in a bid to interdict any land grabs in the city. Mjekula said mayor Yandiswa Vara had visited the scene on Sunday to explain why informal structures could not be built. 'The mayor explained that the land they wanted to occupy had been earmarked for business developments and that they were not allowed to build there,' Mjekula said. 'Despite the explanation, residents insisted that they would forcefully build houses on the land. 'Among the issues raised during the meeting in support of the illegal land occupation were the lack of housing developments for local people. 'In an attempt to de-escalate the situation, the residents were advised to form a committee which would formally engage with the municipality on the way forward regarding the need for housing developments.' Police spokesperson Warrant Officer Majola Nkohli said they were working with traffic officers to monitor the situation. 'Police can confirm that they are investigating a case of contravention of the prevention of illegal eviction from an Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998, and with a possibility of an additional charge of contempt of court at the later stage, after the Makana municipality opened a case on Sunday afternoon. 'Police have activated members from Public Order Policing to monitor the situation.' The Herald
Mail & Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
Clay Formes and the resurgence of African sculptural traditions
Martine Jackson shapes clay to document emotive journeys, such as Silent Resolve At the periphery of Joza township in Makhanda, just before its core unfolds, cliff faces rise in majesty — striations of ochre, rust and gold glowing with a celestial intensity. Clay appears to form itself there, as though the earth is recalling its own shape. And yet the nearby institution insisted (at least during my tenure) on importing clay for its sculpture department. The material on its very doorstep dismissed. Clay can symbolise this paradox: abundant yet overlooked, persistent yet devalued. The book, Clay Formes: Contemporary Clay From South Africa (2023), is something of a response to this limitation. It has a compelling survey of artists, many rooted in that very region, working with the earth beneath their feet. Clay Formes emerged from this ethos as a result of extensive travel, door-to-door conversations and nearly 100 interviews. I spoke to Olivia Barrell, whose path was destined to lead to this publication, about how she came to map the contemporary landscape of local clay and ceramic practice. 'I was born in Johannesburg, but I went to Paris at 18 because I got into Sorbonne University, where I studied history of art with a specialisation in ceramics. I stayed for 10 years and did my postgraduate degrees in Chinese and 17th-century ceramics,' she says. 'When I moved back to South Africa about eight or nine years ago, I became aware of the ceramic artists here; the level of the work was really world class. I have a background across the art world; I've worked as a writer, academic, in auction houses, the secondary market, market analysis and with collectors. I decided to build something that filled a gap I saw in the contemporary African art space.' Her gallery, Art Formes, is devoted solely to contemporary sculpture. Opened in 2021, it foregrounds marginalised sculptural practices through a slow, text-rich and museologically inspired approach. Art Formes is a hybrid institution; part gallery, part living archive. Its name, drawn from the French forme, meaning 'shape' or 'work of art', redefines how contemporary African sculpture is viewed and valued. Works by Sbonelo Luthuli, such as Umsamo (above), draw on Bantu spirituality and cosmology. Photos: Iterations of Earth Barrell explains, 'I wanted to disrupt terminology around sculpture. Sculptural works have often been categorised as craft or design, implying mass production and distancing the artist's hand. I wanted to move away from that. 'Our main focus is clay, both because it's close to my heart and rich in this country's history. We also use [the term] clay formes instead of ceramics because ceramics only refers to clay when fired. So you're ruling out all artists that work in earth-based practices, which we include. We work with clay and we work with all offcuts of the earth as well.' Barrell elaborates, 'I like the term 'ceramic master' because it's an ancient term that refers to an artist, whichever gender, that has mastered the art of ceramics.' The focus on language is palpable. Barrell says, 'It's also why I like ancient terms such as 'pot' or 'vessel'. I don't think that these are tied to utilitarian functions. For many, many centuries, cultures have been making pots and vessels that are not utilitarian.' This linguistic depth broadens the understanding of earth-based art beyond craft and utility to encompass deeper cultural and artistic significance. I kept seeing this term 'slow curation' and I was curious about its implications. 'It's based on my interest in … more slow, text-heavy, explorative curation,' Barrell explains. 'I felt that South African galleries were dominated by a white cube approach to curation aka a lack of curation. And I wanted to bring the museum curatorial style into the contemporary art world 'We don't just believe in selling works. I only work with artists that insert into our art history. So the narrative is essential — it's paramount for me as a gallery owner. 'At Art Formes, there's a strong archival focus … Clay is indigenous to this country, unlike painting, which is a Western import … Many ceramic artists have passed away undocumented. 'Clay is embedded in the cosmological realm; Nguni communities used it to communicate with ancestral worlds.' Her vision is not nostalgic but decolonial; shaped by a feminist commitment to recovering lost legacies. 'Sculptural ceramics in this country were often pioneered by women in the 1970s, which is a history that has also been almost undocumented.' Art Formes represents artists such as Siyabonga Fani (born in 1981), whose smoke-fired terracotta evokes ancestral memory and township life; Sbonelo Luthuli (born 1981), whose conceptual ceramics draw on Bantu spiritual and cosmological traditions; Nicholas Sithole (born 1964), a master potter known for hand-built Zulu forms held in major collections; Clive Sithole (born 1971), whose work bridges Zulu and Venda traditions and explores land, race and animal life; and Nigerian artist Eva Obodo (born 1963), who uses charcoal, unfired clay, wild clay and raw earth. Dante wrote, 'All other means would have been short … but that God's own Son humbled Himself to take on mortal clay' (Paradiso, Canto VII). These words elevate earth-based materials to the sacred threshold where divinity consents embodiment. Making with earth therefore, is entering this liminal space, both medium and metaphor: archive, altar, agent inviting communion with the grounded sublime. Clay's continuum is proof of a collective yearning for substance even amid a screen-saturated, artificial intelligence-driven contemporary moment. 'We crave what is real. We crave what is tactile,' Barrell notes. 'We're drawn to objects that are still made by the human hand.' If Gen Z's technocritical refrain is 'touch grass', Art Formes offers an audaciously ancient call: touch clay. Iterations of Earth: Exploring Multitudes is a revolving group show reimagining earth as sculptural medium, on view from 7 June to 4 September at Art Formes, The Old Biscuit Mill, 375 Albert Road, Woodstock. An exhibition walkabout with select artists, including Ledelle Moe, Martine Jackson, Clive Sithole, Sbonelo Luthuli, Jo Roets, Eva Obodo, Nic Sithole, Siyabonga Fani, and Astrid Dahl, will take place on Saturday, 26 July, from 10am to 11am.
Mail & Guardian
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
The world through Calvin Ratladi's eyes
Calvin Ratladi sees beyond the script, conjuring ghosts of land, legacy and loss in 'Breakfast with Mugabe' The first thing I noticed about Calvin Ratladi were his eyes. Huge, mysterious pools of something warm and comforting. We met on the stairs leading up to Rhodes Theatre in Makhanda where the play he directed for this year's National Arts Festival was about to premiere. Instead of the jingle-jangle of pre-show nervousness, what I saw in his wise and gentle eyes was calm, unabashed patience — an artist's quiet expectation minutes before the public sees a work for the first time. And below the eyes, an openhearted smile, the kind you cherish long after you meet him. For those few moments — 'hello', 'great to meet you', 'break a leg' — Ratladi, who is this year's Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre, looked at me with such intensity it was as if we were old friends. His eyes were, I thought, those of someone with a talent for baring his soul, someone familiar with the sensation of opening himself up in front of an audience. It was weird then to later hear him tell me that he avoids looking at people for too long. 'Usually, I don't look at people when I speak to them,' he told me during a lunchtime interview a few days later. 'I hardly look at people at all, because when I do, I start seeing beyond …' And although his words trailed off then, I understood what he meant, knew that what he was alluding to was a gift, a sensitivity that has doubtlessly fuelled his artistic vision. 'I've always known about this,' he says. His ability to see below the surface, see 'beyond' what exists in the physical realm, is precisely what catches you off guard in his new play, Breakfast with Mugabe , which — after its debut run in Makhanda — opens this week at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. It's a curious and demanding play, one that works hard for the audience's attention, and requires intense listening. If you do fall under its spell, you're rewarded with insights you don't see coming. It also appeals to what Ratladi refers to as 'an African palate' — something that might just throw you off guard with its alternative imagining of an otherwise well-documented sliver of history. 'In my storytelling, it's never just entertainment,' he says. 'There's also advocacy, and there's a conversation.' And, yes, there's a potential provocation. Breakfast With Mugabe – Calvin Ratladi. (MARK WESSELS) In his work, he wants to take you somewhere you haven't been before, and it's not necessarily a comfortable place. When he created a performance about his father, a miner in his childhood home of Witbank, he says he imagined what it must be like to spend so much of one's life far beneath the surface of the earth. And that was the emotional journey he shared with his audience. In Breakfast With Mugabe , he uses a classically-shaped play to take the audience through the veil, to share insight into a realm of spiritual reckoning beyond the rational, and to drive home the dichotomy of two worlds co-existing. The play, written in 2005 by the Cambridge-based writer Fraser Grace, feels particularly poignant at a time when populist authoritarians are having a global moment. It is not a play about Mugabe's rise to power, though, but of a period during his rule when he is plagued by some manifestation, haunted by unresolved grief. And the play hints that what's generally ascribed to paranoia might be something quite different, something unknowable if viewed through a Eurocentric lens. The play has weighed on Ratladi since he first read it in 2016. He tried to produce it previously but couldn't raise the funding; he says it's not the kind of show that can be staged on the cheap. There have been passing thoughts, too, such as casting himself as Mugabe, with non-binary performance artist Albert Ibokwe Khoza in the role of Grace Mugabe. 'I wondered what it would have meant if I played Robert Mugabe with my body, to go against expectations, push boundaries.' His reference to 'my body' is an allusion to his small stature, an effect of kyphoscoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine which is chronic and incurable. Despite its effect on his physical health and on his ability to do some things most of us take for granted (like drive a car), the condition has not stood in the way of his focus on advocating — through storytelling — for a better world. Nonetheless, while his theatre work has earned him acclaim and has been even more widely embraced overseas, he's perhaps best known for his role as Goloza in Shaka iLembe , the popular television series that last month entered its second season on Mzansi Magic. While Ratladi has wanted to be a director since his early-20s, he says he has spent his career accidentally being cast in performing parts, a number of them created specifically for him — despite trying to avoid performing. He says just about everything he's ever acted in, including Shaka iLembe , 'came from coincidences'. Breakfast With Mugabe was no coincidence, though.'I love classics … Macbeth , King Lear , Miss Julie … I love them. And this seemed like a classical play to me, a big story with great depth.' Breakfast With Mugabe also grapples with ideas and themes that recur in works Ratladi has created. (Mark Wessels) It also grapples with ideas and themes that recur in works he's created. 'What seems to come up over and over in my work are issues of land, of memory, and of power. I found these issues paralleled in the play.' In the end, he cast Themba Ndaba as Mugabe and Gontse Ntshegang as Grace, with Craig Jackson as Dr Peric, the psychiatrist summoned to attend to the Zimbabwean president's mounting psychological torment. Ratladi says the play requires actors with stamina who can carry the weight of the drama, endure the heaviness, not to mention the many words. What you notice first about the play is the set, which suggests an almost violent collision between two worlds: a presidential living room imbued with all the trappings of modern Western existence and, surrounding it, a disconcerting African wasteland of dirt and rubble and shattered earth. It is as though some colonial edifice has been torn out of the earth. Discussing the design, Ratladi spoke of the fact that, growing up in a mining environment, this shattered landscape was his reality. 'I think it's what I grew up surrounded by — the mining industry. I grew up in the mines. So it's about the landscape I grew up with. That's what the set is.' The issue of the land — and the destructiveness of mining — is, of course, a key issue in any sort of post-colonial analysis of African history. And there's something elegiac about this part of the set. It's barely used, though, until — during a truly creepy and ethereal moment in the play — it dawns on you that it is a kind of spiritual wasteland. It's a realisation that shifts the play's entire axis of meaning. For Ratladi, the set's design visually and figuratively sets up the dichotomy that's at the heart of the play. 'There's the European side and there's the spiritual side in Africa.' In his sketches of the set, he says he referred to it as 'a split personality', which is something 'a lot of Africans have'. He says the set represents these dichotomies, such as the capacity to embrace African spirituality and Christianity. Ratladi says he was fascinated with the idea that 'what was being regarded as paranoia, a psychological issue in the play, for me was a spiritual issue — that's what I saw this figure of Mugabe actually grappling with as a person'. 'I think some audiences will come with a racial eye,' Ratladi says. 'It's hard not to, because there are so many triggers. Some will feel cheated, some will feel otherwise. For me, that's the conversation I'm trying to have with people. To discuss the fact that as much as Mugabe was so passionate about the land and taking it back, he's the same man who earned seven degrees while in prison, and who had embraced Western ways of thinking. He sought medical help in Europe rather than from the people around him.' Ratladi is interested in the paradoxes and in the possibilities those paradoxes open up. Which is why, when he looks into the story, it seems to him that 'there was a spiritual awakening that wasn't fully embraced — and it caused a lot of suffering'. 'I was interested in what's not in the media, and also not in the script. I was interested in where we might be missing parts of the story of this man about whom so much has been said and written.' He says that, as much as the work might have a political message, there is always a human element, always a personal story at the heart of the wider picture. A nation might be suffering, but what if the cause is a personal pain or affliction being experienced by the nation's leader? It's that dichotomy — between the public and personal story — that he's also interested in with this play. Ratladi says that is the power of theatre; to convey big ideas through a very personal, intimate and digestible story. You sit there in the dark for an hour or two and are not lectured to, but get to witness — and feel — another worldview. Breakfast with Mugabe plays at the Market Theatre from 16 July until 10 August.
Mail & Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
Jonathon Rees: Finding stillness in a note
A moment in time: Images from Jonathon Rees's show titled Stillness. At this year's National Arts Festival in Makhanda, I stumbled upon a quiet revelation in the Monument — a photographic exhibition titled Stillness, where images of jazz musicians mid-performance stood suspended in time — full of intensity, intimacy and grace. The photographer behind them is Jonathon Rees. He might not be a household name in the South African art world just yet but his debut solo exhibition made a powerful case for the visual possibilities of live music. Rees's portraits are stark, focused and emotionally charged; they don't just capture musicians playing music. They distil a moment of devotion, a flicker of transcendence, the quiet just before the applause. The photographs feel like jazz itself — improvisational yet studied, free yet focused. What makes his work all the more remarkable is that Rees is not a full-time photographer. He came to photography — and to jazz — as an outsider. And perhaps that's exactly why his perspective is so refreshing. When I spoke to him, he began, quite unexpectedly, with journalism. 'I studied journalism and history at Rhodes University,' he told me. 'It was at the festival actually, late at night, in a smoky bar, that I discovered jazz. It absolutely moved me.' This was in the 1980s, during apartheid. Rees remembers the jazz venues of that time as some of the only truly integrated spaces. 'It was mixed, but authentically mixed. It just felt natural — it felt like the world we wanted.' And maybe that's the thread running through his work — the longing for unity, beauty and presence. Freeze frame: Photographs from Jonathon Rees's exhibition Stillness which was on at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. Although he had always taken photographs, Rees never considered himself a professional. It wasn't until 2016, when he attended the farewell concert of Max Luner, a young jazz drummer and the son of a friend, that something shifted. 'He played with Caroline Mhlanga, and I took photographs. That night gave me the bug. I realised I could make visual art out of live jazz performance. And that excited me.' Rees didn't grow up with art and music: 'There were no paintings in our home and we didn't really listen to music,' he told me. That context, the absence of cultural exposure in his early life, makes his soulful connection to jazz and photography all the more poignant. 'I felt like I had an opportunity to be an artist in the musical world, even though I never imagined I'd be here,' he said. And once he caught the bug, he chased it obsessively. Rees started attending jazz gigs around Johannesburg two, three, sometimes four nights a week, learning how to work with bad lighting, getting familiar with venues and musicians, and developing a style. For the first five or six years, it was purely about learning. 'As an older person, that was really rewarding. It proved you can still learn something new later in life.' He set out initially trying to capture full-band shots, faces, fingers, full instruments, but quickly realised that between lighting limitations, stage obstructions and constant movement, that approach wasn't sustainable. Instead, he began to move closer, literally and metaphorically. 'I realised I was making portraits. I was focusing on the person and their concentration, their passion, their communication.' Many of the images in Stillness are not of performance in the traditional sense. They show the moment after a solo, the breath before the applause. A moment in time: Images from Jonathon Rees's show titled Stillness. Take the photo of musician Thandi Ntuli right after her final piano note. 'She looks up, absolutely quiet. That moment before the clapping starts, that's the stillness I'm after.' And in another image, of Nduduzo Makhathini, taken on a freezing night at Constitution Hill, vapour rises from a musician's mouth as he exhales into the cold. 'He was making a connection with someone else on stage. That's why I love that image. You can feel the environment, the music and the intimacy,' Rees said. These in-between moments when the musician steps back from the microphone or pauses between phrases are when he feels closest to his subject. 'It's in those gaps that you really see someone.' But stillness, he admits, is also something personal. 'I think I'm also looking for the stillness within myself. We live hectic lives and we need to find a way to be quiet over the chaos.' Photography, as any journalist knows, is technical. In journalism school, we get a crash course at best. So, I asked Rees when he knew he'd taken a solid image and how he developed confidence in his craft. 'I look at a lot of other photographers,' he said. 'There's a strong tradition here — Ernest Cole, Cedric Nunn, Oscar Gutierrez. I admire them deeply.' But, ultimately, it's a matter of internal validation. 'I have to look at a picture and say: 'This is good for me. This is the best I can do.'' He has developed a recognisable visual style — tight black backgrounds, clean compositions and a singular focus on the musician's face or hands. 'I don't want clutter. I want the image to be clear and reflective of what I felt in that moment.' And maybe that's why his images don't fall into the usual tropes of South African photojournalism —poverty, protest, pain. 'We've seen enough of that. I want to show people in their power.' Stillness marks Rees's first full exhibition. He's done mini-shows before in a small town, in a hotel, but this was different. 'To show my work at the National Arts Festival, where I first discovered jazz and where I've come back year after year to shoot jazz, meant everything to me.' Many of the musicians in the photo were performing at the festival. Some came to see the exhibition. Some gave feedback. Most, he says, were gracious and warm. 'You don't always get feedback in a gallery space but I got enough from people I respect to feel validated. And it's motivated me to keep going.' Now, back in Johannesburg, Rees is planning to show Stillness again —possibly at Afrikan Freedom Station in Sophiatown. He might tweak the selection after seeing how the images sat on the walls in Makhanda. But, mostly, the show will stay the same, with a few new additions. He's not slowing down. 'I've never worked so hard on anything in my life. And the question I ask myself constantly is: 'Have I done my best?' With this show, I believe I have.' And that, perhaps, is where the real stillness lies — not just in the silence between two notes but in the quiet, unflinching pursuit of one's own artistic truth.
Mail & Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mail & Guardian
Nyakallo Maleke and the gentle radicalism of drawing as care
Nyakallo Maleke makes joy an art form 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. 'I wanted to revisit how this conversation between materials and memory started. So much of what I used, like the cardboard and the thread, has been with me for a long time. Some of it comes from the market. Some of it reminds me of things I saw my mother doing.' What results is not just an exhibition but a process: 'The way I stitch, for example, is very intuitive. I don't design beforehand. I go with the flow,' she says. 'It becomes a conversation with the materials.' All stitched up: A work (left) from Nyakallo Maleke's installation To Teach in Ways That Teach Us to Take Care of the Soul, which was recently on at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda, and a scene from the show's interactive room, where exhibition-goers could co-create (right). This dialogue between artist and medium, between memory and form is what gives the work its textured, layered energy. It doesn't attempt to arrive at a single message. Instead, it allows space for wandering, for pausing, for unknowing. A moment that perfectly captured this openness occurred during a walkabout of the exhibition. As I stood in the gallery space, someone suddenly pointed out a shongololo, a curled-up centipede resting on one of the artworks. At first, we thought it might have been intentional. It looked so at home there, as though it had been stitched into the piece. We soon realised it had probably fallen through a hole in the gallery roof, landing perfectly in place. The moment was strangely poetic, a reminder that even nature responds to the invitation in Maleke's work. When I shared this with her, she was moved. 'That's so beautiful,' she said. 'Nature definitely plays a role in my design decisions. A lot of the shapes I use are drawn from organic movement, like curves and spirals. 'I want the structures to feel effortless, like they grew into place.' Indeed, those physical structures that hold the large stitched drawings emerge from collaborative processes with other makers. There were no preliminary sketches. 'I worked with Daniel, a collaborator I've worked with before. We used instructions and prompts, rather than plans. The legs of the structures, for example, came from something he had already been exploring. The process was intuitive and shared.' The drawings themselves are monumental in scale, two 20-metre pieces joined seamlessly, but they were built slowly, piece by piece. 'The whole drawing took about two months,' Maleke said. 'And it was made with the help of an assistant. It was laborious, but meaningful. Every part of it was built from the centre outward.' Despite their scale, the works never feel overwhelming. They hold a softness, a kind of invitation to lean in. That same spirit extended into one of the most beloved parts of the show: an interactive room where visitors were invited to make things with the same materials Maleke uses. 'I wanted to offer people a sense of what it feels like to be in my studio,' she said. 'There's often a gap between the artist and the viewer — this wall of misunderstanding or miscommunication. The interactive space was a way of dissolving that. I wanted people to feel free to play, to contribute, to be part of the conversation.' The result was deeply human. People stitched, folded, marked. In a world that often demands perfection or performance, Maleke had created a space where everyone could simply make. 'I'm interested in how people can have their own 'each one, teach one' moments,' she explained. 'I'm not having this conversation alone. The work is about shared learning. Shared imagination.' This emphasis on learning, particularly learning that's embodied and intuitive, runs throughout her practice. 'I treat drawing as a kind of writing. It's how I process space. It's how I navigate memory. It's how I deal with public environments and personal history. Even when I'm not drawing something recognisable, I'm still writing with materials.' And sometimes, when language fails, the materials speak: 'There are times when I can't find the right words,' she reflected, 'and in those moments, I let the materials communicate for me. It's a very tactile, very emotional conversation.' There's vulnerability in that but also a deep sense of care. Her drawings are not illustrations. They are meditations. And central to them is the idea of community, of holding and being held. It's that kind of intentionality that resonates with Standard Bank, long-time supporters of the arts and the festival. Maleke is one of this year's Standard Bank Young Artists for visual arts — a title that carries not just prestige but deep structural support. As Yolisa Koza, head of brand experience, puts it: 'When we look back at the 180-plus artists who've received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, many are now internationally recognised. That in itself is a massive indicator of success. 'Supporting artists like Nyakallo at this pivotal stage in their careers isn't just about sponsorship — it's about shaping a future where the arts remain central to how we tell our stories and imagine our world.' As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Maleke what she hopes people take away from experiencing this work — especially as it prepares to travel to Joburg. 'I hope it offers a sense of joy. Even if just for a moment. I hope it allows people to feel free to experience something nourishing for the soul. Because that's what the process was for me — it was joyful, fulfilling, meditative.' With a gentle laugh, she added, 'And my name means joy. So, I try to carry that into everything I do.' When so much art is consumed fast, documented for social media and discarded just as fast, To Teach in Ways That Teach Us to Take Care of the Soul reminds us to slow down. To make. To feel. To remember. As Maleke continues to evolve her practice, what remains constant is her commitment to drawing, not just as mark-making, but as meaning-making. Her work reminds us that care is a creative act and joy, too, can be revolutionary.
