Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn and received his MFA from Columbia University in New York City. Olujimi’s work complicates and reconsiders established modes of thinking that have morphed into what commonly function as "inevitabilities." Approaching themes of erasure, collective memory and the ineffable from multiple angles of inquiry, his work is expressive and non-linear rather than didactic. With an idiosyncratic sensibility informed by scientific and sociological curiosity and inflected with wry humor, Olujimi mines the collective psyche as a source of social and political commentary and brings them out of the world of the implicit. Once given gravity, weight, and shape it becomes possible to reveal their incongruities and illusory nature. This pursuit takes shape through bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video and performance. His solo exhibitions include; Zulu Time, at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, A Life in Pictures, at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Solastalgia, at Cue Arts Foundation, and Wayward North at Art in General.
His works have premiered nationally at The Sundance Film Festival, Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Mass MoCA. His work has been featured internationally at Museo Nacional Reina Sofía in Madrid; Kunsthal Rotterdam in Netherlands; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland and Para Site in Hong Kong, and soon to be shown at Sharjah Biennial 15, among others. Olujimi has been awarded residencies from Black Rock Senegal, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and MacDowell.
He has received grants and commissions from numerous institutions including The Jerome Foundation, NFYA/ NYSCA Fellowship, MTA Arts & Design and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Media coverage of Olujimi’s work includes; The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, Brooklyn Rail, The Guardian, CNN, and The New York Times. Monographs on his past project 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 (in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas, 2006).