Jamal Cyrus

Jamal Cyrus

b. 1973, Houston
lives in Houston

Houston native Jamal Cyrus received a BFA from the University of Houston (2004) and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2008). He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 2005. As a visual artist, his work is primarily concerned with the political potential of African American popular cultural production and its containment through governmental and corporate forces. Cyrus uses unexpected and evocative artifacts and references in his storytelling. As he discovers the legacy of African Americans through his own work, he regards his pieces as self-educational, a collective making-up-for-lost-time after having endured forms of historical erasure while growing up in the Southern U.S. Cyrus has won several awards, including the David Driskell Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and he was an artist-in-residence at Artpace San Antonio. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2013); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2012); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2011).

Jamal Cyrus, New Ghosts, 2009. Drum kit, sheet rock, and plaster, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist