Kambui Olujimi’s first solo show, Walk the Plank, was a multimedia celebration of sculpture, video, photography, and performance work that, as a corpus of work, served as a conceptual tribute to the life and artistry of the late singer Nina Simone. That Olujimi used the music of Simone as a springboard for the work is not surprising; known for her use of jazz and blues as a vehicle for commenting on racial injustice and inequality in the U.S., Olujimi uses his own milieu—contemporary art—to do very much the same.

Working across an array of mediums, Kambui Olujimi examines the functionings and the creation of iconography, in both historical and contemporary mythological contexts. His photographs, installations, and films have been exhibited in museums both nationally and internationally including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, and have been reviewed in publications such as Art & Auction, Artforum, Art in America, and The New York Times.

Olujimi’s latest film, Heartaches and Toothaches was recently on exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His work is also featured in the groundbreaking show, Black Light White Noise, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

His photographs have also been published in numerous books, including Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, Winter in America, and Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers. Olujimi, who collaborated with Hank Willis Thomas on the short film and accompanying photographic series, Winter in America (2005), received his B.F.A. from the Parsons School of Design. He was born and currently lives in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn.