kyle malanda (b. 1994) is a Malawian visual artist whose interdisciplinary work explores the intersections of sexual identity, mental health, tribalism, and generational trauma in an increasingly globalized digital world. She employs techniques ranging from photography and fashion design to augmented reality, glass beadwork, and film.
Using her multi-cultural and transcontinental experiences as a queer Black woman, kyle's work is an autobiographical reflection of both society and the self/ves. She is based in Lilongwe, Malawi but is often elsewhere.
Kulela, verb, Chichewa: (of children) to raise.
As a black woman, I’m acutely aware of how the historic exploitation of black women’s domestic labour still impacts the daily realities of black women everywhere. Lately, I find myself thinking about milk maids, the help, and other aspects of the mammy archetype.
I refuse to regurgitate trauma by simply recreating the same jarring imagery we see in history books, there’s enough in the past for that. Instead, through Kulela, I choose to reimagine these situations from a place of resistance.
To exist in white supremacist patriarchy is to constantly be at war with society & with history. So how can painful pasts be reimagined? What can resistance look like in the face of the impossible? What about power? How can the narrative be changed to empower those who have been systematically abused? And what role can (imagined) violence play in reclaiming collective dignity?
