Tumelo Mtimkhulu is a South African visual artist, writer and poet born in Germiston, Johannesburg. He completed his BA in Visual Art at the University of Johannesburg in 2022. Mtimkhulu primarily works in the disciplines of making art, poetry and writing. His writing and materiality inform his practice. He is a published poet, having been in the top 10 of the 50 featured poets in the 2020 Corona’cles Poetry Anthology. Mtimkhulu is a recipient of the Athol Williams award for the year 2019 at the 2020 WordNSound Awards. He has performed poetry at a number of places, namely: August House, Victoria Yards, The Market Theatre, AGOG gallery, P.O.P Art Theatre, Con Cowan Theatre and Jo’burg Theatre. Mtimkhulu has also featured in the top 10 for the year 2019 for both the WordNSound Poetry League and World of Words poetry slam. He came second in the 2019 edition of the annual Ekurhuleni Poetry Slam in the category of best Narrative Poem and third in 2020. In 2021, two of his works made it into the top 100 for the Thami Mnyele Fine Art competition, this included a virtual exhibition. Mtimkhulu also won the 2021 Luchulumanco Nanto Foundation Essay Competition. In 2021 his drawings and prints were also featured in two of the UJ Best of the Best group exhibitions. At the beginning of 2022 he was one of the 10 artists chosen for TAF Unearthed; A 6 month mentorship programme which facilitates the growth of artists by way of different workshops and ultimately culminated in a group exhibition curated by Teboho Ralesai for the 2022 instalment of Turbine Art Fair. Mtimkhulu has worked collaboratively on a print project facilitated by Prof. Kim Berman for Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany entitled Beyond Waste at Exploring Visual Culture, Summer school. His work was also featured in the 2022 Summer Salon at the Bag Factory. In 2022, Mtimkhulu also co-curated an exhibition for the World Congress of Constitutional Law at the University of Johannesburg. In 2023, the artist worked collaboratively with South Atlantic Press and showed works with them at the 10th edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
