A teaching work discusses the unmet need that impacts Black folks globally - from New York to Congo: themes of self-actualization and self-witnessing in an empowering point of view. Liberation and freedom through art is a major theme of Maliya's work, so we find her students collaborate as first-time producers and directors in artist activism.

In South Africa, Capetown --

To be remembered, to stay clean and tidy, to make sure your elbows, knees and face are moisturized.
A school portrait - the pride of receiving an education. The audacity of low-income schools to offer no tokens of remembrance of the children who walked those halls. To assume those faces in turtlenecks and hair beads is not something worthy of witness. To be the one to capture those moments on iPhone screens, to offer free and framed portraits of 400 students for the first time. To remember the young who will grow to be old. The old who will look to that photo, recall the lesson, memories, friends, dreams and wishes of that age.

To all be remembered.

https://www.zachlouw.com/7580879-school-portrait-project

A lot of maliya's work is retroactive. In this instance, she cares for her young childhood self, soothing the self that was ostracized in South Africa after moving there from the Congo. In this affirmative coloring book practice, the sketches are donated and collated, and then filled in by groups of children, adults, whoever may need. this goes along with maliya's major narrative: inner child work, to heal not only oneself, but to empathetically offer healing work for children as a communal practice - revolutionary on Ugandan refugee land, to experience and cultivate unity, healing, rest/restoration, and peace, in one of the only countries not currently in war. Meditation in the midst of global colonization.