The Laying of Hands

Southern Guild is pleased to present The Laying of Hands by Manyaku Mashilo at its Los Angeles gallery from 13 February to 3 May, 2025, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States. In her latest series of paintings, Mashilo traces the matrilineal transfer of knowledge, invoking the objects, teachings and rituals passed down as guiding forces in her family and Sepedi culture. Her canvases depict women expansively taking up space, poised and attentive in their pursuit of reinvention both for self and community, as they move from one world order to the next.

Clay features prominently in this body of work, inspired by the ‘koma’ coming-of-age ceremony for young Sepedi women. Mashilo’s larger-than-life figures are cloaked in red paint mixed with ochre, echoing the application of ‘letsoku’, a vivid paste of red ochre mixed with clay and animal fat, smeared on young women’s bodies as they enter this sacred period under the guidance of matriarchs. Covered from head to toe, the pigment sends a powerful message to the community to keep their distance in deference to the sanctity of the process. Upon completion it is rinsed off, signaling the emergence of an evolved self.

Born and raised in Limpopo, the artist grew up witnessing this rite of passage, but left her birth home before experiencing it herself. The Laying of Hands conjures her own circle of caretakers and confidantes as she navigates her path as a mother and artist living and working in Cape Town. It is also a tribute to the memory of her late grandmother, a healer in the community and guardian of familial rituals and traditions.

Like An Order of Being, Mashilo’s 2023 solo at Southern Guild Cape Town, the paintings plot out an alternative cosmology, establishing a vital link between her forebears, current context and imagined future. While the earlier works were populated by fluid figures whose bodies often
merged with the landscape, here Mashilo’s protagonists have taken root, their bodies distinct and defined. Their shared gaze and gestural language signals an independence from the viewer. Protective, upright and confident, there is a tenderness in their interaction that suggests a common sense of purpose. The artist has consciously chosen to depict herself at the centre of this sisterhood, as she “tries to build a whole new world, pulling from several pasts and presents.”

While Mashilo is concerned with issues that carry weight and urgency – connection to land, rites of passage, pathways to being in a world designed against your image as Black people – there is an immense gentleness to the work. To address ongoing violent issues around belonging, she refutes dispossession and feelings of it by creating an alternative realm where feminine protagonists can stand in, step back, and rebuild.

Mashilo’s work is intricately layered both thematically and technically; she weaves together motifs – staffs, headdresses, garments, rays of light – to form an ensemble, a chorus, a song. She begins with her canvases lying flat on the floor, where she drenches them in blots of ruddy ink mixed with
clay, allowing the liquid to form its own map in response to the temperature, surface level, and history in the ground. A celestial realm comes into view, teeming with explosive energy and ancient swirls of dust. On top of this Manyaku overlays another kind of spatial logic with the insertion of perspective and contour lines, the building of structures to house her subjects, and the figures themselves, adorned in garments of filigreed linework.

One of the central themes of The Laying of Hands is the fertile nature of our built environment, be it a home, a room, or a yard. Drawing upon Peter Magubane’s documentary photographs of brightly decorated homes in Gauteng and Limpopo, Mashilo illuminates the idea that structures
beget worlds seen and unseen. Designating a home as “the yellow and blue house on the corner” or establishing an ‘indumba’ (a separate area for spiritual rituals) creates a tangible space where intention becomes a material reality. This physical environment allows community connections,
ceremonies and customs to flourish and take on their own lives. Similarly, Mashilo’s memories of family, religion and cultural practices are materialised in this body of work, honouring the source of her knowledge while expanding its boundary to encompass her life in its current form.

Many of the structures Mashilo depicts reference pre-colonial African architecture, whose circular designs facilitate the gathering, sharing and presence of people. Opting for these curved spaces is an act of self-possession and continuity, which the artist posits as an anchor for optimism, affirming that we have built worlds and can continue to do so.

The layer that sits beneath any given physical structure is the land. Several of the feminine figures in The Laying of Hands are clothed in a ‘ntepa’, a skirt worn by young women for initiation ceremonies in Sepedi cultures. In Mashilo’s work, this item of clothing is also made of earth, worn
around the character’s waist, carrying this belonging with them.

Several of her figures bear a bright, blue staff, which stands as a symbol of support and remembrance. Staffs – or in Sepedi, ‘lepara’ – hold multiple purposes: they can be as ordinary as day, regal, sacred, or combative. ‘Go thekga lapa’ (“to support the home”) is a staff that stays within a home as a protective measure. In these compositions, the staffs balance the weight and posture of the protagonists while offering reprieve and protection.

The Laying of Hands is ultimately a restorative body of work in which the artist remakes and rebuilds aspects of her culture, travelling across time and geography, invoking memory and imagination to affirm that, with many hands, we can build many, abundant worlds to come.

The Laying of Hands by Manyaku Mashilo runs concurrently with Taama by Cheick Diallo, as well as a presentation of recent works by Jozua Gerrard and Jody Paulsen.

Text: Kim M. Reynolds