Tshibumba Kanda Matulu

Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu (1947 in Élisabethville, Belgian Congo – 1981 in Zaire), commonly abbreviated to TKM, was a noted artist and painter from Zaire (the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo). TKM worked within the style termed "African popular art" or "genre painting" and is known for his prolific paintings depicting key moments of Congolese history as they appeared in folk memory. TKM disappeared in 1981 and is believed to have been killed in rioting.

Life and work TKM was born in Élisabethville (modern-day Lubumbashi), in the south of the Belgian Congo, in 1947. TKM worked within the period of cultural authenticité in the 1970s. TKM was one of the leading figures of "African genre painting" which had emerged in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s and which integrated both European and Congolese styles and techniques.

TKM's best-known paintings form part of a series of 101 works commissioned by the German anthropologist Johannes Fabian to illustrate Congolese history as it appeared in national collective memory. The series was produced between 1974 and 1976 and forms the body of TKM's work and was used as the basis for an academic collaboration between the two. The result, Remembering the Present: Paintings and popular history in Zaire, was published in 1996. TKM viewed the purpose of the book as presenting the history of his country to a child born in the country. by contrast, Fabian presents it as an anthropological work for Western study.

The work also emphasizes TKM's admiration of Patrice Lumumba, particularly in the use of deliberate Christ imagery in the paintings of Lumumba, specifically mirroring Jesus' wounds after the crucifixion. The parallel is so clear that Fabian names the section "The Passion of Patrice Lumumba," a reference to "The Passion of the Christ."

102 of TKM's paintings were purchased by the Tropenmuseum, an ethnographic museum in Amsterdam, in 2000.