Cyrus Kabiru born in 1984, Nairobi, Kenya is a self-taught emerging artist, best known for his elaborate and detailed sculptural spectacles or “C-Stunners”, made from found objects and recycled material sourced on the streets of Nairobi. His intricate sculptural works push the boundaries of conventional craftsmanship, sculpture, photography, design and fashion. His work deals with the imagination of the future and the transformation of modernisation.
Notable collections include the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in South Africa; the Han Nefkens H+F Foundation in the Netherlands; the Lemaître Collection in France and Studio Museum Harlem in the USA.
Notable solo exhibitions include Upcoming (Kuona Trust, Nairobi, Kenya: 2010); Cyrus Kabiru (Kunstpodium T Gallery, Tilburg, Netherlands: 2011) and C-Stunners & Black Mamba (SMAC Gallery, Cape Town: 2015).
In 2016 he was selected as one of Quartz’s Africa Innovators (Nairobi, Kenya). In 2013, he was a fellow at TED’s The Young, The Gifted, The Undiscovered in the USA. That same year, Kabiru exhibited at the Lagos Photo Festival (Nigeria). His work also formed part of Afrofuture: Adventure with Makers, Thinkers and Dreamers (Milan Design Week, Italy), as well as The Shadows Took Shape (The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA).
Kabiru‘s work was also included in the seminal travelling exhibition Making Africa – A Continent of Contemporary Design‘, curated by Amelie Klein with Okwui Enwezor, first shown at the Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany: 2015), and later at The Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain) and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (Spain: 2016).
Represented by SMAC Gallery.