NNENA KALU
Nnena Kalu (b.1966 Scotland) is a multimedia artist working with ActionSpace, a progressive art studio in London supporting artists with intellectual disabilities. Her work was featured in Fair Vanity, Summertime, Brooklyn (2020) and Spring Syllabus, J Hammond Projects (2018) both curated by Slominski Projects.
Slominski Projects has a collection of Kalu’s drawings available. A curated selection is on view below with a text written by Lisa Slominski on Kalu’s practice. Additional works are available on request. Enquire here.
SELECT DRAWINGS
Nnena Kalu’s practice has two distinctive but dialectical strands. Her temporal, often durational, sculptural installations and her vortex drawings. Both use physical and instinctual repetitive motions and are at once elaborate but simple, expressive but restrained. In her drawings, the performative rhythm is documented by circular layers of pen, pencil, and ink. In one aspect, her drawings are visually abstract, in another, they evoke the body through the scale of spherical marks relating to the Nnena’s own body and arm length
Kalu’s sculptural discipline has a more symphonic quality involving a myriad of materials, architectural elements, smaller sculptural ‘cocoons’ (which like percussionists during a symphony provide a continual rhythm in many of the installations), and most vital, time. A stage allowing her installations to reach their crescendos. These materials, continually sourced and often donated, include old VHS tapes, yarn, string, cardboard, and various adhesive tapes. Architectural elements provide the foundation for Nnena’s sculptures to form. For Spring Syllabus at J Hammond Projects (2018), it was an existing pillar in the gallery space. For her Glasgow International installation Project Ability (2018) and Studio Voltaire’s elsewhere commission (2020) they provided a built wooden substrate for commencement. As part of her studio practice, Nnena creates smaller wrapped pod-like forms, binding paper, plastic, and fabrics together with yarn and tape. These ‘cocoons’ are repurposed over and over again.
Also integral to Nnena’s work is her relationship with artist facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead. Nnena, who is autistic and limited verbally, has been developing her practice with ActionSpace - a studio for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Nnena and Charlotte have been working together at ActionSpace since 1999. Onsite for installations, Charlotte is with Nnena offering support and assistance with materials. Charlotte and ActionSpace encourage Nnena’s personal creative decisions and artistic vision, while also working to further develop her professional and exhibition opportunities.
From the tactility and scale to the colourful abstract quality of her sculptures, Nnena draws a strong connection to other female sculptors such as Karla Black, Sheila Hicks, and Shinique Smith. Practical, poetic, and progressive, the inherent use of donated or unused material, as well as, repurposing sculptural elements is also something Nnena shares with British sculptor Phyllida Barlow. Likewise, Barlow’s conviction that abstraction holds the potential to address identity - pointing to a feminine voice or something more personal - feels poignant looking at Kalu’s body of work.
Karla Black stated the “most important thing about the work is that it prioritizes material experience over language as a way to learn about and understand the world." This statement seems to really resonate with Nnena’s practice. In many ways, Nnena Kalu’s actions are the material - the tangible components are just a part of the process so that her actions can be recorded physically and visually.
Lisa Slominski, June 2020
Recent exhibitions include Fair Vanity, Summertime, Brooklyn (2020); elsewhere, Studio Voltaire commission at 50 Burlington St, London (2020); Nnena Kalu: Wrapping, Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2019); TUBE LINES, Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London (2019); Spectrum Arts Prize, Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); Glasgow International, Project Ability, Glasgow (2018); Spring Syllabus, J Hammond Projects, London (2018); Watch This Space, Wandsworth Arts Fringe, London (2017); Radical Craft: Alternative Ways of Making, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2017); Capharnaum, Theatre de Liege, Le Madmusee, Liege (2016); Studio Voltaire OPEN, Selected by Cory Arcangel and Hanne Mugaas, Studio Voltaire, London (2015); Dizziness of Freedom, Bermondsey Project, London (2014); The Trouble with Painting Today, Pump House Gallery, London (2014); Epiphanies! Secrets of Outsider Art, St Pancras Hospital, London (2014); Side by Side, Southbank Centre, London (2013); SV12 Member’s Show, Selected by Jenni Lomax and Mike Nelson, Studio Voltaire, London (2012).
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