Samantha Malkadja learned to weave from her mother Frewa Bardaluna, a master fibre artist who had numerous exhibitions with leading Australian commercial galleries.  Samantha’s work is distinguished by her soft tonal range, strong sense of design and intricate technique. Samantha makes panels and 2D sculptures which depict local fish and animal species and often yawkyawks, female water spirits.

Samantha predominately uses gun-menama (pandanus spiralis) in her works. To prepare the pandanus the inner leaves of the plant are collected using a hook. Each V-shaped leaf is first split in half along its spine. After removing the sharp spines, the two surfaces of the leaf are then split away from other. After this preparation, the pandanus is boiled in a billycan with plant materials to dye the fibre. Like her contemporaries, Samantha only uses natural dyes and achieves enormous variation.