CYRUS KABIRU: GIVING TRASH A SECOND CHANCE

CYRUS HAS GIVEN TRASH A SECOND CHANCE FOR YEARS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (published in Top 40 under 40 Nov.19, 2021)

Cyrus Kabiru was in Venice, Italy last week when two of his sculptures were selling at the Art Auction East Africa for more than KSh1.2 million.

“It was important that my work be in the auction, but not important that I be there,” said the 36-year-old globe-trotting Kenyan artist.

What was also important to this self-taught sculptor and painter was that the funds raised would go a long way to building up the Art Orodha Centre that he’d established in 2019 outside Nairobi to provide space for young artists to work, learn, share ideas, exhibit their art, and sell it at the same time.

Cyrus had been invited to Italy to speak to students from several Italian universities about his favorite topic, “Giving trash a second chance”. The subject as well as the speaker have attracted so much interest that he’s been invited with his art, to speak or hold workshops everywhere from Cape Town, Milan, Dubai, and Amsterdam to Hong Kong, Harlem, Hollywood, and Washington, DC.

For a young man who was born and raised just next to the Dandora dump in Korogocho, Cyrus’s journey was fueled by his artistry and his desire to be best at whatever he did. Knowing at a very early age that art was what he wanted to do with his life, the only art materials he could afford were foraged from the city dump.

“People ask me if I was inspired by Picasso or Warhol. I tell them I never heard of them until I left Kenya,” says Cyrus whose C-Stunner eyewear was inspired by his father’s glasses, specks his dad never allowed him to try on.

“So I decided to create specks of my own,” says the artist whose whimsical C-Stunners have been written up everywhere from New York Times to CNN to Art in America.

Cyrus may not be the first African artist to recycle urban trash and transform it into treasured items, including everything from jewelry to sculptures to monumental tapestries. But his message of seeing trash from a fresh perspective, in terms of how it can be resurrected into something dynamic, useful, or even beautiful, is reinforced with his quirky art.

For years, Cyrus was based at Kuona Trust where he initially worked with bottle-tops, wires, clippers, and plyers to create life-sized creatures. He also drew caricatures and cartoons which were initially what took him to the Netherlands for his first exhibition overseas.

But with the success of his C-Stunners, he moved out in order to begin building the art centre which eventually became Art Orodha (or Trush Art). “I want younger artists to benefit from what I have learned,” says Cyrus who keeps a low profile here at home but is closely observed by art critics overseas.

The fact that his Blue Mamba bicycle sculpture sold for over Sh820,000 and his Radio sold for over Sh410,000 shows that even locally, Cyrus’s art is appreciated by those who understand works like his can only accrue in value over time. And Cyrus’s time is now.