Kambui Olujimi


Kambui Olujimi is a New York-based visual artist working across disciplines using installation, photography, performance, tapestry, works on paper, video, large sculptures and painting. His artwork reflects on public discourse, mythology, historical narrative, social practices, exchange, mediated cultures, resilience and autonomy.

Early life and education

Olujimi was born and grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City.
In 1996, he attended Bard College. In 2002, he received a BFA from Parsons School of Design. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 2006. In 2013, Olujimi received an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts.

Career

Reviews of his work have appeared in publications including Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Modern Painters, Artforum, Hyperallergic, and The [Brooklyn Rail]. Throughout his career he has received numerous grants and fellowships including from A Blade of Grass, the Jerome Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has also collaborated with artists Hank Willis Thomas, Christopher Myers, and Coco Fusco.
Olujimi's visual work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Speed Art Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
He has taught in the Visual Art programs at Columbia University and Cooper Union.
Olujimi was one of the subjects of the short feature Through a Lens Darkly, concerning the struggle for African American photographers to receive recognition.

Personal life

Some of Olujimi's work is inspired by Bedford-Stuyvesant community leader and activist Catherine Arline, a woman he considered a surrogate mother and referred to as his guardian angel. Olujimi described his series of portraits of Arline as both a "mourning practice" and an experiment in "memory work."
Olujimi currently lives and works in Queens, New York.

Honors

Awards

Artist-in-residency

Exhibitions

Olujimi's work has been exhibited in a number of institutions nationally, including: the Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Andy Warhol Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, CUE Arts Foundation, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Apexart, Art in General, The Sundance Film Festival, Smithsonian Institution,, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Blanton Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ.
Internationally, Olujimi's work has been exhibited in the Sharjah Biennial 15, the Dakar Biennale Dak'Art 14, Zeitz [Museum of Contemporary Art Africa|Zeitz MOCAA], Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Kiasma, Para Site, The Jim Thompson Art Center.
He has given artist lectures in many institutions nationally and internationally, including Carleton University, Ottawa, University of Buffalo, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Rhode Island School of Design.

Works and publications

  • Olujimi, Kambui. Zulu Time; essays by Sampada Aranke, Gregory Volk, and Leah Kolb. Madison, WI: Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. 2017. Exhibition Catalogue.
  • Olujimi, Kambui. Walk With Me; essays by Jasmine Wahi and Christopher Myers. Newark, NJ: Project for Empty Space. 2020. Exhibition Monograph.