Malakhiwe Makoma Mahlulo

BIOGRAPHY

Malakhiwe Mahlulo is an Art Director and MPhil candidate in the Interdisciplinary Arts Studies programme at the Africa Open Institute. She obtained a BA in Visual Arts from Stellenbosch University in 2022, with a specialization in Visual Communication Design. During her Honours year, under the supervision of Prof. Elizabeth Gunther, she completed a practice-led research project titled, Where Sound Meets Design. The study challenged the pre-eminence of Western musical norms in music theory, through an engagement of cultural knowledge in music education. She received the highest mark for this thesis in the course, Theory of Art and Design. Following the completion of her study, the design projects, Sound Meets Design [EP], and Umculo wamaXhosa: Cultural Soundscapes, received a Bronze Loerie Award and a Silver Pendoring Award, respectively, in 2023.

RESEARCH

Malakhiwe is currently undertaking a research study provisionally titled, Ancestral Algorhythms. This research challenges the persistent notion that African art exists outside of technological development, instead tracing innovation embedded within African material cultures and sonic archives. Drawing on Yuk Hui’s notion of cosmotechnics, the study explores how technology may be understood through culturally situated relations between time, sound, spirituality, materiality, and/or imagination. Research outcomes take shape through new media art, which functions both as speculative interfaces for engagement and as digital sites for the preservation of cultural memory. Ultimately, this study aims to contribute to a growing field of African new media art, by exploring how African narratives may be rewritten in a digital age through forms of visual resistance.