Manyaku Mashilo, born (1991) Limpopo, South Africa, currently living and working in Cape Town, is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who creates mixed media, paper-based drawings and works. Portraits, self-portraits, and inspirations from cartography play an important role in Mashilo’s works: they are immediately recognisable as Africa, harnessing aesthetic traditions from African beadwork, sculpture, line work and body modification practiced by the ethnic groups and cultures of its diaspora.

Mashilo’s works offer a perspective into self-representation, desire, geography and spirituality. For Mashilo, it is important to visualize black identities with agency, compassion and humanity, and create an accurate archive of who we are and how we choose to identify as the black youth of today. Being mainly a figurative artist, Mashilo aims to capture intimate settings and use these as a gateway to ponder the complexities of this young black existence. The abstract environment built around her figures and sometimes as…