Alka's Stages of Making

Uncles at the beach

Alka Dass (b. 1992, Durban) has had the opportunity to showcase her multidisciplinary work at multiple acclaimed galleries since she started working as a professional artist in 2017, subsequent to her time as a Fine Art student at the Durban University of Technology. Her work has also opened doors to a few international residencies. She currently resides in Cape Town, South Africa. Even though her work "resists singular narratives", identity can be used as a point of entry into understanding the complexities found in Alka's work; her family history often forms the base of her multidisciplinary presentations. She seeks to dismantle practices and attitudes she deems regressive within the contemporary art space.

Alka took some time out from making to think through a few questions we sent her about her practice and life. Check out the Q&A below.

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At what stage would you say your art career is at?

I’ve been working professionally since 2017, after leaving my studies in Fine Art at the Durban University of Technology, where I majored in sculpture and painting. It’s been a layered and evolving journey since then. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how to define the stage I’m currently in - I try to focus more on the making, the present moment, rather than measuring where I sit within a hierarchy. That kind of self-mapping can be distracting. What matters most to me is that I continue to grow, to push the work forward with care and curiosity.

That said, the last two years have been pivotal. I was awarded the KZNSA Annual Members Award, which led to a solo show at the gallery. I also had a solo exhibition with Whatiftheworld, and a sold-out show at CHURCH Projects. One of the highlights of my journey so far has been the acquisition of my work by the Iziko National Gallery—an achievement I hold with deep pride and gratitude. I believe the future holds many exciting possibilities, but for now, I’m anchored in the practice.

What have you learnt about yourself in the different stages of your career?

I’ve learnt to hold fast to what I believe in—to let the work speak in the ways it needs to, in the mediums that feel honest. Sometimes words fail me, so I speak in thread, in gesture, in cloth and shadow. The work carries what I can’t always say. It’s emotional, reflective, and often a quiet act of self-discovery. There’s a deep sense of mindfulness stitched into the process—each mark, each thread, a kind of breathing.

I’ve also learnt that I am not here to be seen as a prophet. I don’t claim answers. I make from a space that is considered, tender, and I hope that this is felt—that the viewer meets the work where it lives.

And then, there’s endurance. That’s something I’ve come to know well. I’ve had to sit with the sharp edge of self-doubt and learn how to blunt it with grace. There’s a kind of ritual in showing up, even when the work isn’t received the way you hoped. You get up. You begin again. Because making is the move, and sometimes the only one that makes sense.

What is a good exhibition?

I don’t know if I can speak for the art world as a whole—who can, really?—but for me, a good exhibition is like an invitation into the artist’s interior. For a moment, you’re welcomed into their world; the works begin to speak, to hum, to breathe.

I have a soft spot for installation—it’s where I feel most alive as a viewer. When a space is activated in a way that asks you to move with your whole body, to feel the air shift as you pass through, that’s when it stays with me.

Curation and lighting matter deeply—the way a work is held, or the way it holds the room. Whether it tiptoes or takes over. It’s all a balancing act, and when done with care, it can feel like the space itself is part of the artwork. That, to me, is a kind of magic.

How has your practice changed from when you started out as a student to this stage of your career?

We’re all moving through dissolving time—so maybe the better question is, how hasn’t it changed? [laughs] I’ve explored so many different mediums, both during my studies and after leaving university, and for a long time I was really hard on myself about not committing to just one. I felt like I needed to define myself in strict terms. But looking back, I see all that experimenting as a kind of superpower. Each medium brought something new to the surface, and eventually, those threads wove themselves into what is now my current practice.

Who knows if the experimenting will ever end—I don’t think it should, to be honest. I try not to ask myself whether I’ll always be working in the same way or with the same materials. That kind of thinking can close you off. What’s more important to me is staying open and responsive to what the work needs.

That said, while the mediums and processes have evolved, the root of my practice has remained quite constant. It’s always been about belonging—about longing, memory, identity. Those questions have never left; they’ve just taken different forms as I’ve grown.

What ideas or stories do you want to communicate with the work you create?

The narratives within my work resist singular definitions—they unfold slowly, shaped by memory, omission, and the act of making itself. At its core, my practice is concerned with memory and identity, with recovering what has been erased or excluded from dominant historical records. I return often to the idea of forgotten or deliberately omitted histories—those that never entered our school books—and the quiet labour of healing inherited wounds.

Much of my work embraces mediums historically dismissed as “feminine” or “domestic”—embroidery, beadwork, hand-stitching—processes deeply tied to care, time, and repetition. These methods are not just aesthetic choices but political ones: they speak back to a hierarchy of materials and who is allowed to be considered an artist.

Lately, I’ve been exploring notions of home through sculpture and installation, using the dollhouse as both metaphor and memory-object. I’m interested in how home is curated—first by those who raise us, and later by ourselves—and how these spatial experiences shape our emotional architectures.

My own upbringing, moving between two households after my parents' divorce, introduced a kind of fractured domesticity—different versions of home stitched together across time. The dollhouse becomes a tender site of longing, of what was dreamt of but never quite had—a love for the miniature, for curation, for smallness as a form of intimacy.

In all of this, the personal and the political remain intertwined. The work holds space for both.

What are your thoughts on portraiture?

Portraiture, as a genre, has endured across centuries because it is intrinsically tied to recognition—to being seen and remembered. My engagement with portraiture is largely archival; I work with family photographs, the kinds often tucked into boxes or passed hand-to-hand through generations. These images—both posed and candid—carry traces of presence that surpass the frame. There is something about the gaze in these portraits that evokes a visceral, almost spiritual pull. It is not always easy to articulate, but it echoes in the body.

For me, portraiture is not only about representation but also about return: returning to moments, to people, to silences. It reveals how identity is not only performed but recorded, often imperfectly, through various technologies and eras. Whether in the form of a colonial bust, a passport photo, or a casual digital selfie, portraiture is deeply entwined with how we are documented—and how we remember. It adapts, but the core remains: a way of saying I was here, I saw, I was seen.

What regressive practices do you want to see dismantled within the the art industry?

There are several regressive frameworks within the art world that I hope to see unraveled—unstitched, perhaps, thread by thread. Foremost is the persistent devaluation of practices that fall outside of dominant Western art canons—particularly those deemed “feminine,” “craft-based,” or “domestic.” The labour embedded in thread work, beadwork, and textile processes is often overlooked, dismissed as embellishment rather than acknowledged as deeply conceptual, emotional, and historically resonant.

Equally troubling is the industry’s obsession with constant reinvention—a demand for novelty that erases the importance of process, duration, and return. This insistence on innovation often silences artists whose work is slow, cyclical, and rooted in embodied memory.

As a woman of colour, I have felt the unspoken but forceful push to aestheticise pain in order to be legible within the art world. There is a troubling expectation that our value lies in our trauma—that our legitimacy is tied to our ability to narrativise our wounds. Meanwhile, abstraction remains a luxury afforded more freely to white artists, whose work is not always burdened with the need for explanation.

These double standards are not only exhausting—they’re limiting. They deny artists the full spectrum of expression. I hope for a future where our practices can exist in complexity, without having to perform our identities for recognition or survival.

What is the Kutti Collective?

The Kutti Collective is a chosen family—one I’m deeply proud to be part of. It began in 2019 as a WhatsApp group chat between six of us, South African Indian womxn and queer artists, who were all experiencing similar frustrations in the art world. We were being tokenised, told what to make, how to make it, and witnessing how those outside of our positionality weren’t subjected to the same restrictions.

What began as a support structure gradually grew into something more intentional—a collective space of care, advocacy, resistance, and collaboration. We each work across different mediums and fields, and the diversity of our practices enriches our dialogue and collective output.

The name 'Kutti'—a reclaimed Hindi and Punjabi slur often directed at womxn—is both an act of resistance and reclamation. By embracing it, we subvert its violence and instead hold space for our shared heritage, rage, and tenderness.

Our work is rooted in questions of identity, memory, and representation, especially as they intersect with being Desi in the South African context. It’s about archiving, about making space, and about standing firmly in who we are.

Can commercially viable work be challenging?To what extent do you believe capitalism influences artists' output?

I wouldn’t say capitalism dictates what I make, but it definitely influences how I make. Being a full-time artist means working within the realities of limited resources—materials, time, access to certain spaces or tools. The financial side of things inevitably shapes the pace and scale of production, and how quickly or freely you’re able to bring an idea into form.

That said, I try not to let those limitations decide the conceptual core of my work. The making comes from a very personal, intuitive space, and I protect that as much as I can. But surviving off your practice is no small task. The pressure to sell—to stay visible, relevant, and financially afloat—can be heavy. It doesn’t necessarily change what I want to say, but it does affect how I’m able to say it, or how often I’m able to say it.