TED Community » Cyrus Kabiru

About Me

I am a visual artist currently practicing in Nairobi, Kenya. I am a self taught painter and sculptor. My paintings are often humorous portrayals of contemporary living within Kenya. I adopt the role of a flâneur, the observer, explorer, and lounger using my paintings as the output for my experiences. My sculptural work embodies my role as a “collector” of Nairobi cast offs. I fashion and refashion these waste, recycled, and found materials into various forms. Currently I is focusing on a series that depicts African nature using thousands of bottle caps sewn together. I am perhaps best known for my C-STUNNERS, an ongoing work which I create and wear artistic bifocals. The work sits itself between fashion, wearable art, performance, and one of a kind commodity objects. The C-STUNNERS have a certain energy and playfulness that really captures the sensibility and attitude of a youth generation in Nairobi. They portray the aspiration of popular culture bling; they reflect the ingenuity and resourcefulness of people; the lenses provide a new filter giving a fresh perspective onto the world that we live in transforming the wearer not only in appearance but in mind frame as well.

Location:
Kenya, Nairobi
Current organization:
Self Employed
Current role:
Artist
Gender:
Male
Areas of expertise:
Visual Arts - Collage and mixed media, Visual Arts - Sculpture, Visual Arts - Drawing & Painting, Visual Arts - Design
I am:
Artist, Christian, Designer, Educator/Teacher, Idea generator, Performer, Single
Associations:
Kuona Trust Arts Centre, Sandbox
Languages:
Swahili, English
My website links:
Tumblr.com, www.ckabiruart.daportfolio.com
TED conferences attended:
TED2013

TEDCRED 50+ TED Fellow

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Working in Nairobi I have been greatly influenced by the environment. My passion is making art from recycled materials and found objects in a bid to encourage people to re-use things and be more aware

An idea worth spreading

Saving nature through art: - living and working in Kenya, and especially in Nairobi, a city struggling with the implications of rapid urbanization and population growth through rural to urban migration - growing up one of Nairobi's numerous slums, I have seen a need for the residents of Nairobi to find ways to better use and re-use the resources we have. Many areas of Nairobi have for a long time been drowning in rubbish and communal waste due to a failure by the public service to create infrastructures for collection and recycling. My goal, my idea worth spreading, is to encourage more and more people to create art and functional materials from rubbish and recyclable materials. I have done outreach workshops around Kenya, in areas like Kitui and Kisumu where there was already a vibrant visual arts culture but limited resources were stifling productivity (e.g. sculpture is difficult to do because of deforestation).

Talk to me about

Environmental impact among rural and impoverished urban communities and influencing environmental change. As Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai said "You have to keep at it until it gets rooted."

People don't know that I'm good at

Before I settled on a career in art I tried many different form of 'art'. The things that people don't know that I am good at are storytelling, teaching and contemporary dance.

My TED Story

My first experience with TED was in 2011 when the organisers of TED emailed me a form to fill an application to become a TED fellow. A few weeks later they called me to do a phone interview , and after little bit of research I came to understand more about what it is TED does. Since then I avidly follow the weekly podcasts through Itunes and I try as much as possible to attend TEDx events in my home area in Nairobi. I also interact and share with like minded friends about TED events and talks.

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