Visual Arts at Nelson Mandela University

SAVE THE DATE

The Department of Visual Arts, in the Faculty of Humanities, in collaboration with Standard Bank Arts, invites you to attend

To Teach in Ways That Teaches Us to Care for The Soul

The solo exhibition by the Standard Bank Young Artist 2025 award winner

Nyakallo Maleke

Exhibition Opening (Event: Nyakallo Maleke - Standard Bank Young Artist 2025 Exhibtion Opening)
Tuesday 30 June 2026
17h30 for 18h00

Bird Street Gallery
20 Bird Street, Central, Gqeberha

Artist Walkabout
Saturday 11 July 2026
10h00 - 11h00

SAVE THE DATE

The Department of Visual Arts, in the Faculty of Humanities, in collaboration with Standard Bank Arts, invites you to attend

To Teach in Ways That Teaches Us to Care for The Soul

The solo exhibition by the Standard Bank Young Artist 2025 award winner

Nyakallo Maleke

Exhibition Opening (Event: Nyakallo Maleke - Standard Bank Young Artist 2025 Exhibtion Opening)
Tuesday 30 June 2026
17h30 for 18h00

Bird Street Gallery
20 Bird Street, Central, Gqeberha

Artist Walkabout
Saturday 11 July 2026
10h00 - 11h00

Threads sprinkling out of a former toilet paper roll emerging from and receding into the paper’s surface - what would its voice sound like?
Our journeys in this realm of physical awareness are a pilgrimage towards our inner vitality and source, even as nearly everything around us obscures and pulls us away from it. We find ourselves wandering from the very thing we seek, and truly from ourselves. To teach in ways that teach us to care for the soul is a declaration, a call toward transgression and ultimately joy and liberation. Through a drawing practice that is embodied, playful and intuitive — one of speaking, breathing, thinking, dreaming, walking, writing and being — we are invited to return to self. How then might the drawing equally trace and embody your soul’s quest for nourishment, holding lessons of care and triumph in each mark made and seen?
This wandering is scratched, stitched and sewn, piercing the delicate fabric of wax paper already marbled by traces of its past lives. Clothing snaps sit silently unclasped in the company of nets laden with scrunched-up wonder. Maleke deploys drawing as a vehicle to tell stories, to map thoughts and, quite significantly, to trace movement. The work calls on us to gently hold the astounding tension between thriving and falling apart, as lengths of thread pierce the wax paper and hold it together. Through the expansive work we gain a palpable awareness of movement across the length of paper, imagining the dance and contortions that have mapped contemplations, propositions and refusals along its surface.
Maleke’s installation does not compel us to understand, but to witness — to meet the soul on its path.


ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Nyakallo Maleke is an artist and writer from Johannesburg. Her practice is grounded in the medium of drawing, printmaking and installation. Maleke is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Western Cape.
She has participated in group exhibitions at venues including Stevenson, Cape Town (2017); Modzi Art Gallery, Lusaka (2019), Her international solo exhibition, titled Leaning Towards an Edge that Does Not Leak was held at the John Muafangejo Art Centre in Windhoek, Namibia (2016). She participated in the group exhibition Echo, at Jenkins Johnson, USA (2022) and at the Melrose Gallery (2023) She participated in the group exhibition Punya 2.0 at the Kunsthalle Bern (2024) and has shown at Iziko Museums, Territories Between Us (2021).
Maleke is a fiction writer, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Toyin Falola Prize for her short story titled Eskia in 2020. In 2023 she published Drawing is Still Writing, an artist book with Oriole Press. In 2023 her debut solo exhibition, Making Sense Of The Same Story was curated by Boitumelo Makousu at the Bag Factory Artist Studios in Johannesburg.
Maleke presented at the 2025 UCT Postgraduate Regional Conference “Margins and (Un)Belonging”, where she presented an experimental text titled, Drawing from the Bones: Collective Mourning and the Repurification of Space and Humanity. She is the recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2025). Her second solo exhibition, To Teach in Ways That Teach Us To Care For The Soul (2025) was shown at the National Arts Festival.

Daily Viewing
30 June - 29 July 2026
09h00 - 16h00, Mon - Fri

More information:
[email protected]
visualarts.mandela.ac.za

Nelson Mandela University
Faculty of Humanities at Nelson Mandela University
Visual Arts at Nelson Mandela University
Nelson Mandela University Arts, Culture & Heritage Unit
Standard Bank - Arts
Nelson Mandela University: Missionvale, 2nd Avenue & Bird Street Campuses

An amazing journey it has been, congratulations to Andile Dyalvane and Zizipho Poswa, on twenty years of Imiso Ceramics.

The Department of Visual Art in the Faculty of Humanities invites you to attend the
MAVA Group Exhibition MAVA - Masters in Visual Arts Group Exhibition Opening
an exhibition showcasing the creative work of recent candidates from the Master of Arts in Visual Arts programme
Wednesday 18 February 2026
17h30 for 18h00
Bird Street Gallery
20 Bird Street, Central, Gqeberha
Danica Ridgway
Beatrice van Wyk
Kylie van der Merwe
Sarah van Rooyen
Raquel Adriaan
Daily Viewing
19 February - 27 March 2026
09h00 - 16h00, Mon - Fri
*MA candidate Taryn Jade's exhibition SUM NIL is presented off-site at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum
Open for viewing: 9 Feb - 18 May
Mon-Fri 9:00 - 16:30, Sat 0:00 - 13:00
Visual Arts at Nelson Mandela University
Faculty of Humanities at Nelson Mandela University
Nelson Mandela University
More information:
[email protected]
visualarts.mandela.ac.za

The Department of Visual Art in the Faculty of Humanities invites you to attend the

MAVA Group Exhibition MAVA - Masters in Visual Arts Group Exhibition Opening
an exhibition showcasing the creative work of recent candidates from the Master of Arts in Visual Arts programme


Wednesday 18 February 2026
17h30 for 18h00

Bird Street Gallery
20 Bird Street, Central, Gqeberha

Danica Ridgway
Beatrice van Wyk
Kylie van der Merwe
Sarah van Rooyen
Raquel Adriaan

Daily Viewing
19 February - 27 March 2026
09h00 - 16h00, Mon - Fri

*MA candidate Taryn Jade's exhibition SUM NIL is presented off-site at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum
Open for viewing: 9 Feb - 18 May
Mon-Fri 9:00 - 16:30, Sat 0:00 - 13:00

Visual Arts at Nelson Mandela University
Faculty of Humanities at Nelson Mandela University
Nelson Mandela University

More information:
[email protected]
visualarts.mandela.ac.za

Well done to our crew

Congratulations Richard.