MALKE aka Bernadette Ginestet-Levine

Creativity has always been the essence of my life. I first chose to express myself in words -I began to write poetry at a very young age and I still write and publish. After college, I set off to travel abroad. I have lived and worked in nine different countries, amazed at the creativity of the cultures I encountered along the way.

As a collagist, cut papers were my first medium, putting together and recycling colors and shapes, creating new rhythms. To this medium I soon added feathers, fabric, gauze, or lace. More and more, I am integrating nets of all sorts, as an essential part in my 2D, and even my 3D collages (also called sculptures), in order to create a feeling of distance between what is shown and the eye of the viewer. I like to combine found shapes in new ways in order to express intense and ineffable emotions. In the last three years, I have felt the need to interact with volumes and I have started to create sculptures that are still collages to me. They are my 3D collages. When working on them, it feels to me that I am almost working with organic materials. 

Malke settled in South Carolina 19 years ago.  She writes and publishes articles in literary journals.  She is also a published poet and a collagist. After her post graduate studies, she set off for a life of travel.  She has lived and worked in nine different countries, amazed at the creativity of the cultures she encountered along the way.  She studied ceramics in France, and then received intensive training in Traditional Maghreb Ceramics for eight months at the Algerian Center for Traditional Arts in Algiers.

She also began to express herself creatively in puppets and dolls, but not the kind kids play with.  Enigmatic dolls made of all kinds of matter.  Her dolls have been exhibited at the Museums of Decorative Arts in Basel, Lausanne, Switzerland, and in Frankfurt, Germany.  While living in Brazil, she created two huge puppets which were used as stage décor for a play at Rio's main theater, O Teatro Municipal de Rio de Janeiro. In 1996, Malke was honored with an exhibit of her collages at the Art Gallery of the French Embassy, in Ottawa, Canada.

 Being a resident of the South Carolina, Malke has made a point of showing her work at the local level:  In 1994, she had her first exhibit at the Aiken Center for the Arts, followed in 1995 by another at the USC-Aiken Etherredge Center.  In 2006, she mounted a second exhibit of collages at the USC-Aiken Etherredge Center, and she also participated in a 3-artist exhibit at the Aiken Center For The Arts.  She has also had her work on display in Augusta and Aiken in private galleries

 More recently, at the international level, she has exhibited in 2007 and in 2008 in the prestigious Annual International Salon of Critical Figuration, held in Lyon, France. Se has already been selected to participate in their next International Salon, to be held in Paris, France, in the Spring of 2009.  In the summer of 2008, she has also had her collages on display at the International Zabu art Center and Museum, in Orne, France, for a period of four months.  She was twice the official recipient of the award given by the French artistic movement ‘Art et Fraternité' in France (2007, 2008).