Thelma van Rensburg was born in 1969 in Pretoria, South Africa. She studied and traveled extensively and acquired her BA degree in Psychology at the University of South Africa in the year 2000. In 2007, she acquired her B-Tech Honours Degree in Fine Art from the Tshwane University of Technology. She completed her Master’s Degree in Fine Art at the University of Pretoria in 2016. She is currently enrolled as a PhD student in Practice Based Research at The University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.

Thelma’s work explores female sexuality and how women are represented in the media concerning beaty, ugliness and issues of otherness. Throughout her work she aims to portray the masks that women use in order the be accepted in society. These masks become an alternative “skin’, distorting one’s identity”.  In 2013 she started working with the female form as abject and grotesque to subvert fetishized representations of women in fashion photography. 

Since 2008, Thelma has participated in several group exhibitions, including at the Fried Contemporary Gallery in Pretoria; Maggie Gallery in Centurion; the Gallery at Duncan Yard in Pretoria; and the MAP (Modern Art Projects) Gallery in Graskop. In 2009, she took part in a group exhibition at Deluxeville Gallery in Woodstock; the Rusten-Vrede Gallery in Durbanville, Cape Town; in the Affordable Art Fair at Fried Contemporary Gallery in Pretoria; St Lorient Fashion and Art Gallery in Pretoria and in the Aardklop Arts Festival in Potchefstroom.

We are now a proud exhibitor of Thelma’s work in various mediums.