Cyrus Kabiru was born in 1984 in Nairobi, Kenya, where he currently lives and works. In 2019, Kabiru was a resident artist at the Africa First Residency in collaboration with START incubator project in Israel; preceded by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) Artist in Residency Programme at the Segera Retreat in Laikipia, Kenya in 2018 and the Fundació Han Nefkens residency in Barcelona, Spain in 2016. Selected awards include the Quartz Africa Innovators recognition at Quartz Africa’s Innovators Summit in Nairobi in 2016; the Maker Faire Africa Award for Best Artist Innovation – Thinking Outside the Box in 2010; and the Young Innovator Award by the Sandbox Network, in London, UK, in 2007. Recent talks and presentations include Comparative Futurisms | Afro-Asian Perspectives, as part of Art Basel in Hong Kong, China in 2019; Re-Visioning Africa Through the Creative Lens with Cyrus Kabiru at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC, USA in 2018, as well as “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered” at the TED Talk Conference in Los Angeles, USA in 2013.

Notable group exhibitions include: Material Insanity at MACAAL in Marrakech, Morocco and KUBATANA at Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Vestfossen, Norway, both in 2019; the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kochi, India in 2018; All Things Being Equal, at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2017; Making Africa – A Continent of Contemporary Design, a travelling exhibition curated by Amelie Klein with Okwui Enwezor, at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany in 2015, later shown at The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and selected museums in the USA; Brutal Beauty: Violence and Contemporary Design at the MARTA Herford Museum of Contemporary Art in Herford, Germany in 2016; Lumières d’Afriques, at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris, France; AFRICA – Architecture & Identity at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark; Beyond Borders, the 5th edition of the Beaufort Triennial in West Flanders, Belgium; and Unorthodox, at The Jewish Museum in New York City, USA, all in 2015.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Macho Mbadala in Johannesburg and Pandashuka in Cape Town, both at SMAC Gallery in 2017; C-Stunners and Black Mamba, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, in 2015, Cyrus Kabiru at Kuntspodium T Gallery in Tilburg, Netherlands, in 2011.
Kabiru’s art fair presence includes solo presentations at Art X Lagos, in Nigeria, in 2018, The Armory Show, as part of the curated section, African Perspectives, in New York in 2016; Black Mamba at the FNB Joburg Art Fair in Johannesburg, South Africa as well as The End Of The Black Mamba at the LOOP Fair in Barcelona, Spain, both in 2015.