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Neha Kale

@nehakale

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Writer, journalist + critic | FOREIGN RETURN out September 2026 @newsouthpublishing | Pre-order via link in bio 📚editor-at-large @artguideau

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Every now and then, we host collaborative test kitchens! 👩🏾‍🍳🍗🥣🍽️

For this spring September lunch, Lagos-born home cook Olaolu Olorunnimbe (@olaolus.kitchen) prepared a luminous West African menu of duck sausage scotch eggs, crab efo riro, plantain cake, hibiscus jelly trifle and more. Dishes were accompanied by his signature jollof rice—the meal that inspired him to start his Gadigal-based home business The Jollof Kitchen during Covid. 🇳🇬🍽️

Ola first reached out to us via DM in mid 2025 and during our chat, we asked him what his dream goals were as a cook. 🔮🥘 His response resulted in us planning a lab day and assembling a brainy crew of recipe developers, food stylists and reviewers, documentarians, and culture workers to attend a casual lunch where Ola could test his trial menu and offer critical feedback. 💕

Guests were instantly wowed by Ola’s scrumptious meals, which led to hearty dialogues about reciprocal hospitality, culinary play and prototyping what it means to cook and host for community and be held by peers.

Seven months later, and it’s a joy to see Ola get his flowers as a Top 25 finalist in MasterChef Australia (@masterchefau)! 👏🏾Watch him whip up culinary magic in that iconic kitchen alongside other talented cooks by streaming the current #MasterChef season on Channel 10. 📺

𝙒𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙖𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙣, 𝙊𝙡𝙖—𝙬𝙚’𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙤𝙣!

Home-cook: @olaolus.kitchen
Event producer/comms: @marzigold
Lunch circle: @nehakale @megafaunafood @niwa.mburuja @michael.pdf @cookingcrusade @cheyennebardos @_funpalace Ashleigh Behrens, Sophie Thompson, Bridget Dominic.
Vid: @marzigold

Magenta House Test Kitchen supports emerging creatives by fostering industry/community connections and providing venue/hosting support to help grow professional and experimental practices.

#TestKitchen #MagentaHouse #FlashbackFriday

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[FLASHBACK] Jollof rice is more than a toothsome dish–it’s a cultural marker and spice-filled edible archive symbolising West Africa’s flavour complexities. ❤️‍🔥⚡️For Sydney-based Nigerian cook Olaolu Olorunnimbe (@olaolus.kitchen), this multi-seasoned meal became a way to cure his homesickness during the pandemic. Ola started his home-catering project The Jollof Kitchen (now called Olalolu’s Kitchen) a couple of years ago to maintain his roots while living in the diaspora and to share his love of continental food cultures with others. Ola tells us “I love introducing Aussies to the flavours of my Nigerian childhood and Jollof rice is my signature dish. It’s a spicy, savoury dish that’s well worth a Google and even more worth trying for yourself.”

Back in September, we invited a group of recipe developers, food stylists, culture workers, chefs, and storytellers to Magenta House (@magentahouse.redfern) for a day of collective eating and generative conversations with Ola to explore key heritage ingredients, food industry movements, and passion projects. Ola prepared a secret experimental menu yielding crab, duck, chicken, hibiscus and plantain (and jollof rice of course)—combined with aromatic and piquant spices that danced boldly on our tongues! Months down the line and we’re still craving his delectable plantain cake and the rest!🥮🍌❤️‍🔥

Follow Ola’s culinary journey via @olaolus.kitchen
🍗🥚🌶️

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Contributions to this month’s @artguideau , accompanying an excellent essay by @stephaniewoodsydney on how AI is reframing our relationship with creative labour. I elaborated on the parallels she draws between 18th century lace-makers and artists today, both of whom faced / face a “seismic revolution” threatening their relevance. In the illustrations above, the diligent artist is hard at work, inevitably shaped by the tapestry of her everyday life - the unpredictability of inspiration, her imperfections, vulnerabilities and emotional experiences embedded in every stitch - an innate depth and soul which can never be replaced by AI.

Some really amazing, thoughtful perspectives in this essay - read it in the current issue / also free to read on Art Guide’s website.

Thanks to @nehakale for the commission!

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[LIBRARY] One of the joys of running a public library is meeting new faces each week (including peeps from around the 🌍) and deepening synergies by trading ideas, local stories, and subculture insights 💫Here’s some spritely humans who have stepped through our front door since we opened 3 years ago: a marination of poets, film-makers, students, coders, bartenders, culture workers, curators, and travellers with 💯 good vibes! Library visits at Magenta House remain free and open to all; find out more via our website 💻👋🏾

On that note, ICYMI: we’re taking a break from 17 November -10 December to spend crucial time in the Philippines. We’re pausing public visits temporarily but you can still peruse our online shop (see November update Reel for lowdown). Library spots will resume from 14 December.

You can also catch Magenta House Shop’s pop-up at Rozelle Collectors Markets with our stall-mates @welcomemerchant on 13 December 🛍️ New stock revealed soon ~ many goodies on lock! 👀🎁

#HomeLibrary #KnowledgeSharing #Redfern #ArtsAndCultureLibrary #MagentaHouseLibrary #ResourceLibrary

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✨ Acquisition Announcement ✨⁠
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We’re thrilled to share that NewSouth Publishing has acquired world rights to Foreign Return: On Art and Inhabitation by acclaimed writer and cultural critic Neha Kale (@nehakale).⁠
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This debut literary nonfiction work asks: How do you inhabit spaces never built for you? Can you find a home where you were never meant to belong?⁠
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Blending memoir, art, and cultural criticism, Foreign Return explores migration, belonging, and the meaning of home – through the lens of artists like Tracey Emin, Dayanita Singh, Albert Namatjira, and more.⁠
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Ideal for readers of Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City, this resonant work invites us to rethink the places we inhabit and the stories we tell about them. It is a call to build empathetic, imaginative bridges between ourselves and others, and to reclaim the power to define home on our own terms.⁠
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Coming August 2026. 📚 ⁠
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Head to the link in bio to learn more. ⁠
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#ForeignReturn #NehaKale #LiteraryNonfiction

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Join us for an enchanting evening of live poetry - Vessels of Love 2025: Love in Transmission!
The Consulate General of India, Sydney, and Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, in collaboration with The SALONS and Poetry Sydney, proudly present a Live Poetry Event—an immersive celebration of artistic expression.
Vessels of Love 2025: Love in Transmission!
📅 Date: Friday, 29 August 2025
⏰ Time: 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
📍 Venue: Level 2, 265 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, NSW 2000.
📢 RSVP: library.sydney@mea.gov.in
Experience the magic of words. Embrace the rhythm of poetry.
#poetry #literature #rhythm

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Postcards from Mumbai 📸 from my days exploring Bandra out now in @internationaltraveller. Beautiful words by @nehakale and a big thank you to @lauren.de.sousa and @imogeneveson ✨

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The cancellation of Khaled Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale presentation by Creative Australia signals a historic breakdown of trust between artists and institutions. But it also reveals the interlocking forces that threaten the breadth of artistic expression in this country, revealing what we stand to lose as a culture as a result. In a deeply reported essay, the first in ‘The Long View’, Art Guide’s new series exploring the relationship between art and society, Dee Jefferson speaks to artists, curators and arts workers, looking beyond the fallout of the cancellation—and the reactions that have accompanied it—to chart the effects that will ripple through the art world for years to come.

Read the full essay via the link in our bio.

@nehakale @deejefferson #khaledsabsabi #venicebiennale #archiemoore #cherinefahd #brucejohnsonmclean #joannakitto #hodaafshar

Images:
1. Khaled Sabsabi, ‘70,000 veils’, 2014, 100-channel HD video installation, audio, plastic, wood, 100 USB sticks and 40 3D anaglyph red/cyan glasses; MP4 – 1080P – 16:9 aspect video files, scent, 11.40 min each channel; 70,000 seconds in total. Collection of the artist, Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photograph by Sharon Hickey.
2. Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’, 2024, Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024. Photographer: Andrea Rossetti © the artist. Image courtesy of the artist and The Commercial.
3. Cherine Fahd, ‘Day 2’ from ‘Hiding Portraits 100 Days’, 2009-2010. Image courtesy the artist.
4. Hoda Afshar, ‘Portrait of Behrouz Boochani #1’ from the ‘Remain’ series, 2018. Courtesy the Artist and Milani Gallery.

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Tina Stefanou’s equine collaborators feature on the cover of the May/June issue of Art Guide, which explores how art can act as an extraordinary interface between the self and the world. Inside, Josephine Mead explores Stefanou’s practice, which is the subject of a solo exhibition at ACCA. Meanwhile, Maya Hodge writes on an exhibition uniting trailblazing Indigenous artists with those who are currently or have previously been incarcerated. While Blak In-Justice breaks new ground, Revealed enters its 17th year of celebrating emerging First Nations talent with a growing community spirit and passion, as Gok-Lim Finch reports. Meanwhile, Yorta Yorta woman Kimberley Moulton has applied an expanded First Peoples curatorial approach to the ninth TarraWarra Biennial, and Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen speaks to three artists about their contributions.

Elsewhere, writer Cher Tan profiles twin brothers and artistic collaborators Man&Wah, whose approach to art-making draws from the “fieldwork of life”, and Michelle Wang invites us into the Sydney studio of Remy Faint, whose practice explores the transcultural importance of silk.

This and more in the May/June 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia. Subscribe via the link in our bio.
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@_the_longest_hum @nehakale @hungrylikethewolifson @_waykuu gok_lim @manandwah @remy.faint @kimberleymoulton @tarrawarrama #ArtGuideAustralia #TinaStefanou @josephinemead
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Cover image: Tina Stefanou, 'Horse Power', 2019, made with Buster, Breeze, and Duke from Jocklebeary Farm Equine Sanctuary, single-channel HD video, black and white, two-channel audio, film stills by Andrew Kaineder.

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I have a piece on @moorditj_manda in this edition @withregram • @nehakale So many brilliant writers and artists in the latest issue of @artguideau (my last as acting editor-in-chief) — @leetranlam charts the latest chapter in the age-old relationship between food and art accompanied by original artwork by @gemleslie , @artwriter_etc writes on the work of @zannybegg which often pivots around womens’ lives and social history, @clairegcoleman profiles artist Amanda Bell and much more. Out around the country (featuring a new painting by @gregoryhodgestudio on the cover) now 💕. #amandabell #artguide #artguideau #clairegcoleman

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Thanks for having me @artguideau (March/April ‘25 Issue).

This pantry portrait was supporting a long form essay by Lee Tran Lam. She explores how the age-old relationship between food and art is galvanising a new generation of chefs and artists.

@leetranlam @nehakale @artguideau

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day one
ghost route (2025)

After the poem of the same name written by Neha Kale, and one of five vignettes from the complete work Untitled (memory aid), originally devised for The Salons love lines exhibition (Chrissie Cotter Gallery, 2023).
Autofiction as a map of emotional geography—each memory, a pinpointed coordinate of love.

written and spoken by @nehakale
music by @angiecontini
film by The Salons
presented by Poetry Sydney
to view the complete poetry film, and find out more, visit the link in our bio

#poetrysydney #VOL2025 #vesselsoflove2025 #loveintransmission2025 #thesalons #poetryfilm #sierramadre #desert #transformation #originalscore #experimentalmusic #sbs #valentines

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