Born in the South African province of Limpopo, Manyaku Mashilo is a Cape Town-based artist whose multidimensional practice encompasses mixed-media painting, drawing, and collage. In her new solo exhibition, ‘An Order of Being’, her figurative paintings navigate and construct an imaginative future realm. This abstracted plane — expansive in its capacity to heal, liberate and reinvent — is occupied by a collective of fluid, dreamlike figures.
Mashilo’s practice acts as a vehicle for sense-making; her canvases stand as liminal spaces for synthesising elements of her religious upbringing, ancestral heritage, both real and invented myth, folklore, science fiction, music and sourced archival photographic images. ‘An Order of Being’ is a gentle confrontation with the multiplicity of the artist’s past, present and future facets of selfhood.
Q > When did you first fall in love with making art?
A > I fell in love with making art at home. I come from a family who love to use their hands. My siblings are fine artists, my mother makes clothing and my father taught himself how to make architecture plans so he could build our family a dream home. I grew up in a home of dreamers, storytellers and inventors.
Q > In what period/location have you learnt the most?
A > I learn the most when time slows down and time slows down whenever I am home.
Q > If you could give your 16-year-old self a message (or advice), what would you tell her?
A > I would tell her to slow down. To try and be present in the things she is interested in and to take her time. I would tell her to trust herself and assure her that she will be okay.
Q > What patterns, routines or rituals define or help to shape your life and its rhythms?
A > My day always starts with a song and is filled with music throughout. Music becomes part of my ritual and prayer, and guides me through whatever the day may bring.
Q > Who/what inspires you?
A >
- My family
- Friends
- Jazz
- Fashion Photographs
- Afro-Furturists
- Material
- Mountains
- Black
Q > What’s the most satisfying part of your creative process (and why)?
A > The most satisfying part of my process is seeing the worlds I create come together. There are many layers to my work and I never know what layers will remain and which will go.
Manyaku Mashilo at her studio, 2023. Photography by Hayden Phipps
Q > What’s the most important tool in your work?
A > The tools I use in my work change all the time. I think my water spray bottle and Imbola (red ochre) are important to my work right now.
Q > Tell us an intriguing, disturbing or inspiring story you can’t forget.
A > When I was younger, I would visit my grandparents in Limpopo and in their living room there were three pictures that hung side by side. The first was a portrait of my late great grandfather. The other, a portrait of both my late grandparents in their church uniform sitting on school chairs gazing back intensely at the camera and in between them, a print of The Last Supper painting by Leonardo da Vinci. I thought the combination of these three images was interesting — disturbing but loaded with so much story and history. I often think about this room and those photographs, what they meant to them and how they have influenced me.
Q > With your new solo show ‘An Order of Being’, what message are you hoping people who see the work will take away?
A > I am hoping people will take away a feeling of belonging. I hope they are taken on a journey through time with themselves. I hope they find messages of healing. I hope they feel represented.
Q > Predictions: what is something you strongly believe is going to come to pass.
A > I strongly believe that my work will travel the world and will be the thing that helps me meet people like me and who inspire me.
