calls herself a metaphysicist by vocation. A jewellery artist,
she draws inspiration for her artistic and curatorial work from the
dark of the souls and the night as well as the colour black. In 2001 she
organised the exhibition Nocturnus with international contributions at
the Tallinn Art Academy, where she has been teaching as a professor of
jewellery since 1996, and a night-symposium on the island of Muhu.
She studied jewellery art at the Tallin Art Academy with Leili Kuldkepp
in the 1980s, followed by studies of gemmology and stone-working
in St. Petersburg, studies with Bernd Munstein in Stipshausen, near
Idar-Oberstein (Germany), and design studies at the Lahti University
of Applied Sciences in Finland. Her work has been shown at international
solo exhibitions, and her jewellery can be seen in museums and
public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum London, the
Espace Solidor in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, the Alice und Louis Koch
Collection in Zurich, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg
and the LACMA, Los Angeles. Among her publications are the exhibition
catalogue Nocturnus (2001), Ornament as a Crime (1998, with Christer Jonsson), Chroma/Monochroma (2007), Just
Must (2008) and Castle in the Air (2011, with
Tanel Veenre) – a publication about works of the Estonian jewellery art
group õhuLoss (eng. ‘castle in the air’), which Mälk founded as a mentor
in 1999. Her monography Testament was published
in 2017. Mälk’s work has received several international awards,
most recently the renowned Bavarian State Prize 2016.