Nnena Kalu

Kalu was born in Glasgow to Nigerian parents in 1966, and moved to Wandsworth in London at a young age.^[4] She is autistic and has limited verbal communication.^[5]

She began making art in the 1980s^[2] at Hill House day centre in Tooting, in south London.^[3]

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.^[6][7] Her sculptures are usually made of found materials.^[8] In 2013, she began making distinctive drawings which have been compared to whirlpools, usually completed in pairs or trios,^[6] sometimes fours or sixes, but not alone. Kalu creates the drawings together, often with her eyes closed.^[9]

Critics have focused on the physicality of her work, comparing her sculptures to bodies^[10] and "disembowelled organs".^[7]

In 1999, Kalu began working as an artist at ActionSpace in Clapham, an organization which assists artists with learning disabilities.^[11]

In 2016, her works were shown in Belgium alongside artists such as Laure Prouvost, who won the Turner Prize in 2013;^[3] at the 2018 Glasgow International;^[12] Humber Street Gallery;^[12][13] and at Studio Voltaire.^[14] Her first commercial show was in 2024, at Arcadia Missa in London. The gallery is her official representative.^[6]

Creations of Care,^[9] Kalu's first major institutional show, was held in 2025 at the Kunsthall Stavanger [no] in Norway.^[3] Later in 2025, she won the Turner Prize, the most prominent British art award.^[11] The jury nominated her for her work in Conversations at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10 at Manifesta 15 in Barcelona.^[15] 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.^[11]

She was the first artist with a learning disability to win the prize,^[11] and her facilitator and studio manager, Charlotte Hollinshead, made a speech on her behalf, in which she said that Kalu "has faced an incredible amount of discrimination" and hoped that award would help "smash the prejudice away."^[3]

Kalu's works have been included as part of the Arts Council Collection^[16] and the collection of The Tate.^[17]