SETLAMORAGO MASHILO: Land Grabber's Shrine

Everard Read Cape Town is please to present Land Grabber's Shrine, a solo exhibition of new works by Setlamorago Mashilo.

For the last ten years I have sought memories along the goat path, to bring out the life of my rural home. Leaning heavily on visions of the interior, I confront the thoughts and events that we have lived through as a country. Roads provide us a freedom that, albeit mythical, distances us from home, to any exile - a paradox.

But further we go,

seeking footprints along the way,

going against the grain into a personal past,

negotiating our bewitched crossroad.

My homeland itches from the labels that stick to it.

In part the work examines the fractious relationship between ‘placelessness and the tyranny of place’; both our land and our people are conflated to explore how figures in history, my Grandmother Manyaku Mashilo, Moses Tladi, Solomon Plaatjie, Kgoši Sekhukhune, have been pivotal in our cultural trajectory, a trajectory that continues to sustain us into generations. As the seeds that we birth during our years of toil grow, sustain livelihoods and subsequently die, our recession back into the ‘land’ marks a movement back into ourselves.

A distance from Maroteng, on my way elsewhere, I have carried an offering to the shrine: some 367 cobs of maize, the ‘Columbus exchange’.  E fela le ka re apeela potsa, ka ge re sa tsebe gore le re swaretse dife la gosasa.

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CLICK HERE TO RSVP TO THE OPENING NIGHT EVENT 

*Face masks are required and must be worn at all times when visiting the gallery