Mapping the soul through drawing: Nyakallo Maleke’s visceral installation at the National Arts Festival

Nyakallo Maleke presents 'Teaching in Ways That Teach Us to Care For The Soul' at the 2025 National Arts Festival. Picture: Mark Wessels

The 2025 Standard Bank Young Artist Award recipient for Visual Arts, Nyakallo Maleke, has recently unveiled a deeply contemplative body of work at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. Titled Teaching In Ways That Teach Us To Care For The Soul, her installation is less an exhibition and more a poetic experience, an invitation to feel, reflect, and find one's way through drawing.

At the heart of this work lies collaboration. Maleke’s process was shaped by a dialogue not only with her materials but with fellow creatives: Daniel Gary, Tshégofatsó Mabaso, Scott Williams and Makaziwe Radebe, each bringing their distinct disciplines into the fold.

“These collaborators weren’t just executing tasks,” Maleke explains. “They were responding to the drawings through their own practices, steelwork, design, writing, curating, even doula work. That conversation, that exchange, is part of the artwork.”

The result is a 40-metre-long drawing, of which roughly 35 metres were installed in the space. Made almost entirely of fragile, unconventional materials, such as baking paper, wax paper, dried leaves, and sponges, Maleke’s work challenges conventional notions of what drawing is or should be. “I’m interested in drawing not as a representation of something, but as a study of material and movement,” she says.

Maleke describes her installation as a kind of map, a visual journey of self-discovery. “I always think of the song Find a Way by A Tribe Called Quest,” she says. “For me, this work is about charting a path. As you move through the space, you’re invited to trace your route within the drawing, to connect with your own stories, memories, and sensations.”

This mapping is both physical and emotional. The materials she uses are ephemeral and everyday; they carry stories of fragility and resilience.

“A sponge that loses its shape over time. Baking paper that burns and transforms. Leaves that dry and return. These are metaphors for our lives,” she says. “They speak of wear and tenderness, of crumbling and restoration.”

Nyakallo Maleke presents 'Teaching in Ways That Teach Us to Care For The Soul' at the 2025 National Arts Festival. Picture: Mark Wessels

This sense of transformation continues in the adjoining Drawing Room, an interactive space where audience members are invited to reflect on the work by creating their own drawings. Along the walls are prompts like “Describe or draw the materials you remember seeing,” or “Draw how you moved through the drawing using lines and colour only.” The room becomes a living archive, as participants leave their responses behind, some to be integrated into future iterations of the show.

“The Drawing Room isn’t just a participatory add-on,” Maleke notes. “It’s an extension of the artwork, a gesture toward collective authorship. By drawing, people are invited into the studio space with me. It’s about breaking down that boundary between artist and audience.”

This breaking of boundaries is core to Maleke’s approach, not only in materials and participation but in pedagogy. Her passion for education has long been part of her practice, and Teaching In Ways That Teach Us To Care For The Soul is, in part, a love letter to that calling.

“Every one of my collaborators has taught in some capacity. And we taught each other during this process. We learned to let go of rigid ideas about making, and just… trust.”

Nyakallo Maleke presents 'Teaching in Ways That Teach Us to Care For The Soul' at the 2025 National Arts Festival. Picture: Mark Wessels

On July 3, Maleke will host two workshops as part of the National Arts Festival’s schools program, where high school learners will engage with mark-making and material exploration.

“We’ll be using everyday objects, building surfaces, observing, and drawing with unconventional tools. It’s about expanding what young people think drawing can be,” she said.

This impulse to include, to educate, and to archive is rooted in her first solo exhibition, Making Sense of the Same Story, where an interactive table sparked spontaneous audience contributions. “People left their drawings behind. And that moment stuck with me,” she recalls. “Those gestures, those marks, they were just as valuable as my own. I wanted to honour that.”

Indeed, in Maleke’s world, a drawing is never just a drawing. It's stitching (intuitively done, without formal training), it’s movement, it’s memory. “Every time you make a mark, you’re leaving something behind. That’s what drawing has taught me: it’s sentimental. It’s soulful.”

Even the staging of the exhibition challenges tradition. Instead of placing the drawing on the wall, as might be expected, Maleke laid it out in space, fragile, unframed, exposed to air, movement, and interaction. “You’re confronted by its vulnerability,” she says. “And in doing so, maybe you're reminded of your own.”

Nyakallo Maleke presents 'Teaching in Ways That Teach Us to Care For The Soul' at the 2025 National Arts Festival. Picture: Mark Wessels

Visitors to the opening were visibly moved. Some spoke of roots, others of music. One saw playfulness; another, grounding. “It’s wild,” Maleke smiles. “I didn’t anticipate those interpretations, but they make perfect sense. That’s the beauty of it, everyone brings something new. It’s never the same work twice.”

And neither will it be. Maleke hints that the next iteration of the exhibition, likely in Johannesburg, will expand and transform. Perhaps it will even include some of the audience contributions from Makhanda.

Nyakallo Maleke presents 'Teaching in Ways That Teach Us to Care For The Soul' at the 2025 National Arts Festival. Picture: Mark Wessels

“Imagine someone walking into that gallery and seeing their drawing woven into the installation. That’s history. That’s impact.”

More than just a display of visual art, Teaching In Ways That Teach Us To Care For The Soul is a practice in listening, in slowing down, in allowing materials and people to speak. It’s a classroom. A studio. A sanctuary.

“Art spaces can also be learning spaces,” Maleke says. “They can be places of care, of collaboration, of soul.”

And that's exactly what Maleke's artwork did for me and many others, I believe.

Teaching In Ways That Teach Us To Care For The Soul runs for the duration of the 2025 National Arts Festival.

The National Arts Festival is currently underway at Makhanda, Eastern Cape, until July 6.