Setlamorago Mashilo
Artist Biography
​
​
b. 1987, Pretoria, South Africa)
​
Setlamorago Mashilo is compelled by a sense of social conscience. He employs the use of ‘dika le diema’ (Sepedi proverbs and idioms) into his multidisciplinary art practice, to translate the community’s oral histories into artistic interventions and installations.
​
Taking the baton from his earlier works, Mabu a u tswitswe, Bodulo and Landlords & Trespassers, Mashilo’s work oscillates around the ‘consequence’ of dwelling, building and thinking, often [re] interrogating and [re] articulating narratives that resonate individually and collectively about our sense of loss, nostalgia and inherited memories. His work becomes a form of conversation about the values of our societies; how they are deeply encoded in our language and the objects that are derived from them and, ultimately, how that extrapolates into the communities we grow up in.
Selected Awards and Residencies
2013 PPC Young Concrete Sculptor Award (Fans Choice Award)
​
2014 Turbine Art Fair & Sylt Emerging Artist Award
​
2015 Sylt Residency
​
2016 Global Nomadic Art Project
Selected Public Commissions/ Collections
​
Modern Art Projects
​
Tambo Foundation
Selected Group/ Solo Exhibitions
2013 PPC Young Sculptor Awards, Pretoria Artist Association
​
2014 Fresh Produce, Turbine Art Fair
Contemporary Totem Poles (Cool Capital Biennale)
2015 Landlords & Trespassers, Turbine Art Fair
Emerging Artists, Shanghai Art Fair
Capital Present, Fried Contemporary
The Spiritual in the Material”, Lizamore & Associates
FETISH, Albany Museum
When You Come Back, Art on Paper Miami
New Voices, Lizamore & Ass
​
2016 African Equations, Lizamore & Associates
Installation Art Fair, New York
Tokyo International Art Fair
Performing Wo/Man, North-West University Gallery
Bodulo, Rotterdam International Art Fair
2016 Amandla! Reform, Debate, Redress, Oliewenhuis Art Museum
2017 Johannesburg Art Fair, Everard Read Gallery
2018 The Land Will Decide, solo exhibition at Everard Read Gallery
Johannesburg Art Fair, Everard Read Gallery
​
​
​