Growing up in a strict religious community, Mashilo points to religion which cut off accessibility to other forms of spiritual practice. Her portraits serve as a record of the many conversations and intimate retellings of religious and spiritual memories, sounds, and practices which connect contemporary urban individuals to their ancestors.

Mashilo’s cartographies describe earthly landscapes and its matter, and expand into celestial patterns, telling of the growth of cosmological knowledge. We could identify constellations, fingerprints, tree rings, and biological matters as they tear, move, and reshape themselves. If Afrofuturism reference science fiction and technology as the route to time travel, Mashilo places spiritual practices as the route to travel between times and to connect past, present, and future.

‘Mmagorena’ translates to ‘Our Mother’. (Excerpt of a text written by Tammy Langtry)