Nyakallo Maleke is a South African visual artist whose intricate drawings serve as meditative explorations of migration, memory, and identity. Each work becomes a journey in itself — an evolving map of vulnerability, spatial awareness, and the complex geographies of the self. Her practice investigates the liminal spaces we occupy and the traces we leave behind, using drawing not just as a medium but as a metaphor for movement, displacement, and emotional terrain.
A graduate of édhéa – École de design et haute école d’art du Valais in Switzerland, where she earned her Master’s degree, Maleke’s formal training deepened her conceptual approach while affirming her instinctive mark-making process. Her time in Europe also led to numerous exhibitions across the continent, where her work has been praised for its subtle intensity and ability to convey profound narratives through line, absence, and repetition.
Maleke’s drawings often blur the boundaries between cartography and storytelling, archival impulse and poetic abstraction. In her hands, the act of drawing becomes a means of recovery — of histories lost, lands traversed, and selves reshaped. Her current body of work continues to challenge the conventions of the medium, expanding the conversation around what drawing can be and what it can hold.
Through her practice, Maleke invites viewers into a quiet yet powerful contemplation of place, presence, and belonging — charting emotional and physical landscapes that resonate across cultures and borders.
