ABOUT
Living in Midrand, Ilka van Schalkwyk obtained her degree in Fine Arts from the University of Pretoria in 2009, with a distinction for her practical component. In 2010 she won the coveted ABSA l’Atelier prize with her work Reading Colour. The prize included a six month stay at the Cite Internationale des Artes in Paris from July 2011 to January 2012. In 2012 she held her first solo exhibition entitled Yesterday at the ABSA Gallery in Johannesburg. She has an Honours degree in journalism and completed her Masters in Art at the University of Johannesburg in 2018. Ilka participated in the Booknesses Colloquium in 2017, not only exhibiting in both exhibitions held at the colloquium but also presenting a research paper on synaesthesia and art.
Ilka often uses her own grapheme synaesthesia, where she associates letters of the alphabet and numbers with colour, as code in her artworks. Her work combines issues of freedoms and othering as well as historic references particularly to the music and lifestyle of the 1960s and 70s. Ilka is a book and installation artist, and her works are represented in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Jack Ginsberg Collection as well as several University collections in the USA.