Manya was born in South Africa. She came to London in the 1960’s with her family who were refugees from the Apartheid regime. This life experience informs her work which deals with memory, belonging, and dislocation.
These necessarily small works, quietly evoke past selves and lost places. Manya embraces hand stitching as an essential way to explore these themes in a necessarily slow and painstaking way. Threads of memory bear witness to the testimony of family photographs, which are the starting point for her explorations. The medium of embroidery lends itself to this process by its very nature of pixellation. Manya’s technique, not only refers to the photography which lies behind the work, but juxtaposes the traditions of painting with the discipline of female textile work. Through her use of the medium, she works to unpick the meaning of a moment, to reconstruct another perspective or bring into being the presence of someone or something misplaced.
Manya studied Foundation at Camberwell School of Art and Textiles at West Surrey College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. She worked as a fine artist, making
paintings, and was a Senior Lecturer on the Foundation course at Winchester School of Art.
She has recently started to show her work which has been selected for the Royal Academy
Summer Show in 2022 and 2023. First Prize Hand Embroidery Mr X Stitch 2023.