Tsoku Maela's practice concerns itself with African identities and psyche — exploring themes through the conduit of spirituality and culture, using dreams and ancestral memory as an archive to reimagine African futures and pasts in the present time.

His series God Takes No Sides consists of two bodies of work, each created during a different stage of an awakening process. The first, Barongwa: I Am That I Am (2016), is a journey in search of the self. Barongwa means guardian angels in Sepedi — ancestors given charge over lives by the highest form, God, the Father, the Mother. This body of work explores the process of discovering the individual self from birth to ascension through their guidance.

The second, Samādhi: Dipiri Tša MaWatle (2019), is a process of letting go of the individual self and becoming one with a collective I. Dipiri Tša Mawatle translates to secrets of the oceans in Sepedi. Where Barongwa looks above, Samādhi looks inward. Movement symbolises celebration, chaos, Asana and Pranayama. Oil-paper umbrellas symbolise union and mourning.

These are two sides of a whole. Yin and Yang. Persona and shadow self. Light and dark. Masculine and feminine. In a society where many live a life of quiet desperation, conditioned to choose one of these identities, Maela insists: everything functions in tandem. To understand that is to begin to understand the essence of duality in life.