Sikatongo's Garden

Luyando Muleya (b. 2001, Zambia) is an emerging curator and cultural worker redefining how we engage with archives and knowledge.

Based in Livingstone, his practice believes that humans are not separate from nature, but active participants in living, intelligent ecosystems. This way of thinking breathes life into Sikatongo’s Garden—a metaphor for archives as dynamic, living spaces.

Operating as a steward and facilitator, Muleya amplifies the endogenous systems already thriving in Southern African communities. He engages with knowledges encoded in seasonal rhythms, ancestral rituals, and oral traditions, positioning gardens as primary sites of inquiry where intergenerational exchange flourishes through “fluent skill-swaps” between traditional wisdom and contemporary practice.

His institutional grounding as a 2024-2025 Curatorial Fellow at LoCA informs projects that challenge neocolonial narratives. From Black Mountain; At What Point Do I Stop Asking for Permission at the Lusaka National Museum (2025)—where participatory zine-making created a “living archive”—to co-curating Look at Us Now at the National Gallery of Zambia (2024-2025), his work centers agent community testimony.

Through Sikatongo’s Garden (2023–present) and his peer-led initiative Collective Cares, Muleya builds infrastructure rooted in mutual care. He asks the field: How do we listen to the ecological intelligence embedded in place? How can we deepen the reach of systems that have sustained generations?

🌱 A vital voice reimagining cultural work as reciprocal, place-based, and alive.

A garden is a practice.

Sikatongo’s Garden is my metaphor for a way of working—a parallel pedagogy where knowledge is grounded in what a community needs. I argue that archives are ecological systems—dynamic and participatory.

This is an invitation.

What ways of knowing were you taught that never came from a book?

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