Red ocher––its smell, color, and texture––holds strong associations for Manyaku Mashilo, a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily in painting. As a child, after a long day of playing outside, her shoes and legs would be covered in the color, which is derived from the iron-rich clay in her home province of Limpopo in northwestern South Africa. She remembers the koma, a traditional coming-of-age ceremony for young Sepedi women, when the clay would be mixed with animal fat and smeared all over the initiates’ bodies. After a period of seclusion and instruction led by the matriarchs of the community, the girls would then be bathed, and the red would ripple into the river, signaling their entry into womanhood.
At the age of nine, Mashilo moved to the large city of Pretoria, also in South Africa, before she, too, could participate in the initiation. “The move affected me a lot,” she said. The transition from a rural environment to the hustle and bustle of the city introduced what the artist calls “a duality that I have tried to balance within myself.” Throughout Mashilo’s work, those dripping reds rain across the canvas, a symbol of home in a world of non-belonging.
Ever since quitting her gallery job in 2020 to commit to artmaking full-time, Mashilo has been invited to participate in group exhibitions the world over, from the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco; to the Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, Netherlands; to Gagosian in London. Earlier this year, she had her first show in the U.S., “The Laying of Hands” at the L.A. space of Southern Guild, which has represented her since 2023. Recently, the gallery presented a new body of her work at Frieze London, with more to be presented at ART X Lagos.
Over her lifetime, Mashilo “got really good at storytelling as a way to survive,” she said. This was a response to the “different worlds” which she has, at different points of her life, called home: Limpopo, Pretoria, Johannesburg, and, currently, Cape Town. Her paintings focus on world-building and reimagining the world around her, which she said “can be healing.”
Many of her figures wear ntepa, or skirts, around their waists that represent their ancestral lands. Others hold bright blue staffs referencing the lepara, which is charged with prayers before it is gifted to the head of a family. One hung in Mashilo’s childhood home. When the work traveled overseas, she was surprised to find that these tokens of her home resonated with audiences far away. In this way, Mashilo’s work speaks to migration and the importance of finding community wherever one may be.
When it comes to translating her visions into paintings, Mashilo begins by laying the canvas flat on the ground. She pours water over it, then adds ocher, which is harvested from caves in Limpopo, and ink. How the pigment spreads or shrinks depends on the environment: the subtle textures of the floor, or the weather on that particular day in the studio. “Elements make the painting,” she said.
Occasionally, Mashilo will sprinkle imphepho onto the underlayer. This plant, which is endemic to South Africa, is often used in traditional medicine. It can be boiled into tea that soothes coughs and sore throat, or made into an oil that can be applied to wounds. Notably, the leaves and stems are often dried, bundled, and burned in a ritual that is meant to evoke one’s ancestors. Once the underlayer is dry, Mashilo outlines her figures in pencil, then applies layers of acrylic, one after the other, creating rich, ruddy hues on the figures’ skin. She cited Caravaggio as a major influence, which could help explain the chiaroscuro contrast that makes Mashilo’s compositions so striking.
In her paintings, she depicts rituals that call upon earth and spirit, memories that evoke dreams, and otherworldly places, as in Moving forward on and into eternity (2020), an acrylic, metallic ink and paper collage painting. Shown at Mashilo’s first solo exhibition at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town in 2020, it depicts a crowd of figures resembling a legion of the faithful in a celestial landscape. They’re clad in the white dresses typical of members of the Zion Christian Church, a sect that many of Mashilo’s family members belong to.
For her second solo show, “An Order of Being” in 2024 at Southern Guild, these figures recurred. Her painting Passage to Prayer (2023) sees them parade, once again, across a cosmological map; orbs of ocher are suspended in the atmosphere like gaseous planets. Meanwhile two figures––bedecked in gowns of oxidized watercolor and blue linework, respectively––stand contemplatively in the center of the composition.
These detailed costumes are evidence of the artist’s background in fashion design, which she studied at the Vega School of Design in Pretoria. While the fashion world highlights white, thin, and feminine bodies, Mashilo was inspired by her studies to represent Black women who subvert the mold.
To this day, Mashilo’s figures are intimate character studies, whether she’s working from archival imagery or family photographs, live models or self-portraits. Her subjects are often rendered grandly––larger-than-life compared to their surroundings––and yet their expressions are familiar. For example, in We came unafraid and willing to stay (2024), the seven figures gathered in the composition could resemble goddesses from another dimension, supermodels from a fashion editorial, or photographs of a friend group collaged a bedroom wall. Mashilo sees this practice as a form of “ancestrally and spiritually building worlds,” telling stories that allow the past to commune with the future, the material with the spiritual, reality with imagination.
Recently, in addition to acrylic, the artist has begun to experiment with oil paint. “Oil requires me to slow down,” she said. As a result, she has spent a considerable amount of time with these new works, deepening and refining them. They are delicate studies of the feminine form that feel more rooted in the earthly plane than her previous astrological works. With their sandy backdrops, they resemble, in some ways, rock paintings in the caves from which the ocher is derived––married, of course, with both modern and art historical sensibilities.
Her newest work, she said, is inspired by her grandmother, who recently passed away; it is “cemented by dreams that she is sending me.” In addition to being a farmer and a healer, her grandmother was considered a spiritual leader of her community. As she works, Mashilo surrounds herself with the spirits of her grandmother and other women who came before her.
In her studio she listens to jazz musicians like Alice Coltrane. Pinned to the wall are photographs of her mother, her grandmother, and worshippers photographed by the legendary South African photographer Santu Mofokeng. In her paintings, Mashilo imagines worlds in which their spirits may continue to thrive. This is a ritual. And within it, a sort of healing.
The Artsy Vanguard 2026
The Artsy Vanguard is now in its eighth year of highlighting the most promising artists working today. As 2026 approaches, we’re celebrating 10 talents poised to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture.
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Video by Pushpin Films / Rudy Kinder for Artsy.
Thumbnail: Portrait of Manyaku Mashilo by Christopher Wormald. Courtesy of Southern Guild; Manyaku Mashilo, from left to right: “Held by the Sky II,” 2024, and “Her Arrival I,” 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Southern Guild.
