Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10, 2024
Installation at Manifesta 15, Barcelona, Spain
Installation view of Nnena Kalu, Creations of Care (2025); Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
Installation view of Nnena Kalu, Creations of Care (2025); Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway
Scottish, 21st century
Born 1966, Glasgow, Scotland; lives and works in London, England
Nnena Kalu is a prolific, professional artist working from ActionSpace’s supported studio in Studio Voltaire since 1999. Over two decades, she has created a vast body of sculptural and 2D artworks and developed a live, performative element to her art practice, creating site-specific sculptural works for live installations.
Kalu, who has limited verbal communication, was born in Glasgow in 1966 to Nigerian parents, but moved at a young age to Wandsworth in London, where she still lives in supported care, not far from her studio at ActionSpace, a charity that provides space and assistance to learning disabled artists. She is autistic with complex support needs, and Hollinshead leads the team that has been helping to nurture her creative endeavours since 1999. “From the beginning, her need to make was off the scale,” says Charlotte Hollinshead, Kalu’s studio manager and artistic facilitator.
Kalu is driven by an instinctive urge to build repeated marks and forms, creating intensely layered, visually impactful artworks with dense colours and compacted, flowing lines. For her vortex style drawings, she works systematically across two drawings a day, creating them as a pair. The drawings, developed in unison, are an echo; caught in a loop of pure form and physical action. The drawings mirror her sculptural works; huge cocoons made of found fabric and VHS tape, wrapped into massive, tight, twisting, ultra-colourful knots, often hanging from the ceiling, looming from above.
In 2025, Nnena Kalu was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize, a significant advancement in the art world's acceptance of artists with learning disabilities.
