Nnena Kalu

Born 1966 Glasgow

Nnena has been a resident artist at ActionSpace at Studio Voltaire since 1999. She has created a large body of sculptural and two dimensional work and developed a live element to her site-specific installation practice.

Nnena’s two-dimensional works are entwined with her sculptural practice, both explorations of space which in the case of her drawings are dictated by the length and reach of Nnena’s arms, as well as the size of the paper. “Drawings and paintings are frequently produced in pairs, the second an echo of the first. Process, repetition and material are pivotal to Nnena’s practice. The energy and passion Nnena emits through making, her methodology and the complex and ambitious work she creates are fascinating.” ActionSpace

In 2021 Nnena was awarded a LOEWE FOUNDATION/Studio Voltaire studio award and in 2025 she was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize

Nnena’s work is held in collections nationally and internationally including the Arts Council Collection and the Tate Gallery. She is represented by the Arcadia Missa Gallery

“Her drawings are incredible: vast, hypnotic, swirling vortices of repeated circular marks on pale yellow paper. But it’s her sculptural installations that have garnered the most attention: huge cocoons made of found fabric and VHS tape, wrapped into massive, tight, twisting, ultra-colourful knots. It was an installation of these heady sculptures at Manifesta 15, a pan-European art biennial held in Barcelona last year, that brought her to the attention of the Turner committee.” Eddy Frankel in The Guardian, May 2025

Selected Exhibitions
2025 Turner Prize at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford
2025 Tranceducers: Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Automatists, GPS Gallery, London
2025 Creations of Care at the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway
2024 Conversations, Walker Art Gallery
2024 Frieze Arcadia Missa
2024 Manifesta 15, Art Biennial Barcelona Metropolitana, Barcelona
2024 Kaleidoscopic Realms, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery
2023 Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body at MK Gallery
2022 To all the Kings who have no Crowns, Carl Freedman Gallery with the Jennifer Lauren Gallery
2021 Royal Academy Summer Show invited by Yinka Shonibare
2020 Studio Voltaire Elsewhere, Mayfair.
2019 Nnena Kalu ‘Wrapping’, Humber Street Gallery, Hull
2018 Solo show at Glasgow International with Project Ability