Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and received his MFA from Columbia University in New York City.
Through a multidisciplinary practice encompassing video, sculpture, painting, and installation, Olujimi develops a powerful body of work articulated as a series of social and political commentaries. Historical facts and scientific curiosities intertwine, giving rise to a dense and evocative poetics that awakens a deeper sensibility and invites us to perceive and understand the world differently.
His solo exhibitions include Zulu Time at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; A Life in Picturesat the MIT List Visual Arts Center; Solastalgia at the Cue Art Foundation; and Wayward North at Art in General. His work has premiered nationally at the Sundance Film Festival, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), and MASS MoCA. Internationally, his work has been presented at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Kunsthal Rotterdam, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Para Site (Hong Kong), and as part of Sharjah Biennial 15, among others.
Olujimi has been awarded residencies at Black Rock Senegal, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and MacDowell. He has received grants and commissions from numerous institutions, including the Jerome Foundation, the NYFA / NYSCA Fellowship, MTA Arts & Design, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work has been featured in major publications such as The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, The Guardian, CNN, and The New York Times.
Monographs dedicated to his projects include Walk With Me (2020), Zulu Time (2017), Wayward North (2012), The Lost Rivers Dream Index (2007/2018), Walk the Plank (2006), and Winter in America (2006, in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas).
Exhibitions (selection): The Lost Rivers Dream Index Vol. 3, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (France, 2023); The Rock That Cuts The Night in Two, University Galleries of Illinois State University (USA, 2023); When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, Zeitz MOCAA (South Africa, 2023); Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE, 2023).