Thulile Gamedze (b. 1992, Bristol, UK) is a Johannesburg-based cultural worker engaged in text, textile and history, and interested in the possibilities that emerge through the collapse of discipline. She has an M.Phil in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town and has published extensively in art and academic platforms in areas from contemporary art and Southern African art history, to the aesthetics of radical movements, the politics and poetics of water, and pedagogical practices of the undercommons. Some of her significant art publications include the catalogues for Documenta 14, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and iterations of Recontres’ de Bamako, and her academic publications include the South Atlantic Quarterly, Radical Philosophy and MARCH: Journal of Art and Strategy.
Through the workings of the 'aftercycle', Thuli's brand FOR THE AFTERLIFE (FTA) experiments with found textile and one-of-one wear. FTA's close material work has ultimately prompted her broader practice, which is interested in the ghosts of the secondhand realm, and the formal, historic, political and social meanings in (soft) design. Her ongoing artistic and social history project After Library works these ideas into a collaborative reading and archival project engaging ongoing clothing loans. Having piloted in Johannesburg in 2025, the library brings together people with garment design, situated reading, and the documentation of practices of wear.
Thuli was a member of iQhiya, a collective of Black women artists, who actively exhibited between 2015 and 2018, including at documenta14: Learning from Athens. She is part of an ongoing collaboration with her sibling Asher Simiso, with whom she works and writes as gamEdze and gamedZe. Alongside Abri de Swardt, Thuli is a collaborator in Overnight Services, a queer project engaging the illogics of dreaming as a generative voice for the disruption of museums' colonial order. Finally, performing as Ethan T. Smoke, Thuli forms part of the Johannesburg-based drag collective Jozi Kings and Things.
Thulile Gamedze – Curriculum Vitae
Select Group Exhibitions
2026 gender/genre, Kumalo | Turpin, Johannesburg, RSA
2025 After Library (funded by the National Arts Council), Ellis House Art Gallery, Johannesburg.
2025 To break a bitter fever, Bag Factory, Johannesburg.
2023 Occupation, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg.
2022 Practices of Repair, The Point of Order, Johannesburg. Verse, Association for Visual Artists (AVA), Cape Town
2021 Ghost Exhibition, Circuit Art Centre, Lausanne, Switzerland.
2020 2, Circuit Art Centre, Lausanne, Switzerland.
2018 Cape to Tehran, Gallery MOMO Johannesburg and Cape Town.
2018 Glasgow International, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland. (With iQhiya collective)
2017 Documenta14: Learning from Athens; The Portrait, Athens School of Fine Art, Athens, and Monday, Kultuur Haupt bahnhof Kassel. (With iQhiya collective)
2016 Home Truths: Domestic
Select Lectures, Panels, and Workshops
2023 “In Conversation with Mary Evans,” as part of SURVEY: Image as History/ History as Image, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.
2022 Reflections on Documenta, lumbung.jozi, LAPA, Johannesburg.
2022 Immersive Matters: Practices in Dreams and Water, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, United Kingdom. (Online)
2022 Good Neighbours, a Writing Workshop at NIROX Foundation, facilitated by Thulile Gamedze and Sven Christian.
2022 “Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose In Conversation with Thulile Gamedze,” Invocation #1:
2022 Indigo Waves and Other Stories, ZEITZ MOCAA, Cape Town, conceived by
2022 Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Natasha Ginwala with Michelangelo Corsair
2021 The importance of creative courses and arts education to make education more democratic, Vooruit Kunstencentrum, Ghent, Belgium. (Online)
2021 The Black Self, Nirox Sculpture Park, workshop and presentation of papers facilitated by Ashraf Jamal and Sven Christian
Select Art Fairs
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, RSA: 2026
RMB Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg, RSA: 2026
FNB Art Joburg, Johannesburg, RSA: 2026