Nnena Kalu

Early life Kalu was born in Glasgow to Nigerian parents in 1966, and moved to Wandsworth in London at a young age. She is autistic and has limited verbal communication.

She began making art in the 1980s

Work Kalu began making sculptures around 2010, after making flat artworks for years. She begins with a bundle of paper, cloth, or another base structure, and then elaborates it - often compulsively - by wrapping, layering, and binding materials such as ropes, strips of fabric, unspooled VHS cassette tape, netting and rubbish. Her sculptures are usually made of found materials. In 2013, she began making distinctive drawings which have been compared to whirlpools, usually completed in pairs or trios, sometimes fours or sixes, but not alone. Kalu creates the drawings together, often with her eyes closed. and "disembowelled organs".

In 2016, her works were shown in Belgium alongside artists such as Laure Prouvost, who won the Turner Prize in 2013; Humber Street Gallery; and at Studio Voltaire. Her first commercial show was in 2024, at Arcadia Missa in London. The gallery is her official representative. Kalu's first major institutional show, was held in 2025 at the in Norway. The BBC described her winning works as drawings of tornado-like swirls, and brightly coloured sculptures that are wrapped haphazardly with layers of materials such as ribbon, string, card and VHS tape. and the collection of The Tate.