Lecturer presents solo exhibition and participates in collaborative residency

From flying solo in Pretoria, to a collaboration in Witklipfontein, the Tshwane University of Technology’s Cow Mashilo, aka Cow Mash, shares her art with varied audiences in the coming months.

Cow Mashilo Firstly, Cow, a lecturer in Fibre Arts in the Department of Fine and Studio Arts at the Faculty of Arts and Design, hosts a solo exhibition titled 𝙙𝙞𝙩š𝙬𝙖𝙩š𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙜 currently on at the Javett-UP’s Reimagined Tower Gallery.

𝙙𝙞𝙩š𝙬𝙖𝙩š𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙜, translated as “they come from the field/the origins of the land,” speaks to lineage, source and belonging. It is both spatial and spiritual, understanding land as place and as memory, ancestry and knowledge. The exhibition reflects Cow’s practice of working across time while imagining speculative futures where indigenous knowledge systems and spiritual cosmologies coexist and evolve.

The exhibition has been curated by Puleng Plessie, Storm Janse van Rensburg and the curatorial team at Javett-UP.

The exhibition is open for viewing from Tuesdays to Saturdays and the last Sunday of every month from 10:00 to 16:00.

Her time at Javett-UP also included a holiday programme for parents and their children on 29 March. Designed to complement the artworks in her exhibition, the programme featured Maskitlana, an indigenous children’s game, used as a way to encourage intergenerational conversation.

This was followed by a hands-on activity where participants created flowers inspired by their names – each person making a paper flower that reflects the meaning or purpose embedded in their name.

There will be a walkabout led by Cow before the exhibition comes to an end. Please keep a look out for dates on the Javett UP website: Home - Javett-UP.

In April, Cow will be at Witklipfontein in the Free State at the invitation of the Southern African Fellowship for Contemporary Art (SAFFCA) for a residency.

“I’m excited to be paired with an artist from Peru who is based in Brussels, Barbara Prada. It will be a rich cultural exchange and I look forward to finding points of connection, collaborating and sharing the same workspace,” she says.

“I’ll be bringing along some felt and want to experiment – playing with it to discover new ways of teaching the material. I generally work with synthetic materials intentionally, to speak to cultural and systemic changes and transformations. It will be interesting to incorporate and engage with nature during the residency and to find ways of working that are more sustainable and eco-friendlier. I believe that teaching in fibre arts creates a learning environment that values indigenous and sustainable approaches to sourcing materials and making,” Cow adds.

Cow’s creative process is guided by her self-given name, Cow. In her daily life and art, she expresses her experiences and thoughts using cow-related metaphors, associations and analogies.

For more about her celebrated career as an artist, click here: https://www.instagram.com/cow.mash/

Some of Cow’s work that will be on exhibition at Javett-UP.

Unidentified species- prediction: tuku Material one (resin), powder-coated tin, various synthetic fibres 2025 Re fetile kamoka Powder-coated metal bath & fimo clay 2024

Molemi Mašemong Mixed media 2024