 |
| Cyrus Kabiru and Amuga Eschuci, Mongolian Elephant, 2012, C-STUNNERS Photography Series, C-type print, 30" x 20". Image via undertheinfluencemagazine.tumblr.com. |
The
C-STUNNERS
Sculpture with Photography by Amunga Eschuchi
March
1st - 9th 2013
FRANK PICTURES GALLERY in association with ED CROSS FINE ART
Bergamot
Station, A-5
2525
Michigan Avenue
Santa
Monica, CA
The
young Kenyan artist and TED Fellow, Cyrus Kabiru stands at the forefront of a
generation of artists whose innovation and creativity is shaping the way in
which not only art from Africa is viewed but Africa itself, as the work travels
across borders challenging perceptions and stereotypes. Kabiru’s work has
caught the imagination of the art world both within Africa and internationally
as his signature C-STUNNERS body of work provides a metaphor for new ways of
looking at Africa and the new ways that Africa views the rest of the world.
Working
with found objects his sculpture is built on the notion of, in Kabiru’s own
words, ‘giving trash a second chance.’ Weaving together materials such as
bottle tops, shoe polish tins, wire and cutlery he is most well-known for his
series of wearable eyewear sculpture, C-STUNNERS.
C-STUNNERS
are Kabiru’s series of wearable eyewear sculpture which sit on the boundary
between art, performance, fashion and design. Innovative pieces of art, each
telling their own story and made from working with found objects from the
artist’s immediate environment his work is inspired by the childhood memories
of growing up in an area of Nairobi bordering Nairobi’s biggest rubbish dump.
Kabiru
has been creating his 'spectacles' since childhood when he started to produce
toys for himself, and later for his class-mates often as a way of bartering his
way through school work. His passion for ‘glasses” stems from his father's
phobia about them (in turn caused by the fact that the artist’s grandparents
punished his father severely when, as a boy, he lost a pair of glasses that
they had made huge sacrifices to provide him with). When the young Kabiru took
to playing with sunglasses at home he was told by his father “if you want to
survive in my house you will make your own glasses” .Taking him at his word the
young boy embarked on what will almost certainly be a lifetime’s mission to
create wearable eyewear sculpture out of “trash”. His father, bemused by the
explosion of toy glasses, became an unwitting curator, decreeing that his son
should “only make the glasses when there is a reason” by recreating again and
again the object of his father's pain and his grandparent's hope Kabiru began
to create a body of work that would have symbolic significance well beyond his
own family story and become a metaphor for the power of creative transformation
in both within Africa and worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment