Samkelo Matomela is a South African painter and printmaker born in eThekwini, KwaZulu-Natal, in 1996. He moved to Soweto as a teenager, an experience that exposed him to a different mix of languages, cultures and neighbourhood identities. Art became an important means of making connections within that environment and would eventually lead him from studies in Town and Regional Planning to formal printmaking training at Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg.
Matomela’s practice draws heavily from the communities and people around him, particularly the social realities of township life. His earlier work examines culture, youth, unemployment and the pressures placed on young people, while more recent painting has increasingly turned inward. Portraits and figures become vehicles through which he considers vulnerability, emotional experience and the complexities of navigating adulthood as a young Black man.
Symbolism plays an important role in his visual language. The butterfly, recurring across Matomela’s work, represents change, hope and the possibility of moving beyond present circumstances. This motif gives his often contemplative figures another dimension: transformation remains possible even within environments shaped by uncertainty.
Working primarily through painting, drawing and printmaking, Matomela shifts between carefully observed figures and imaginative spaces. His paintings can employ layered or impasto surfaces, while recurring imagery of reading, nature and transformation creates a dialogue between external circumstance and an individual’s inner life.
