In Conversation with Kambui Olujimi: 2025 Ree Kaneko Award Recipient

MADE AT BEMIS

Kambui Olujimi first joined the Bemis community as an artist-in-residence in 2009 and later returned as a participating artist in the group exhibitions Time + Space: Futures in 2016 and All Together, Amongst Many: Reflections on Empathy in 2021. Over the years, his interdisciplinary practice—spanning painting, sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video, and performance—has gained national and international recognition for its incisive examinations of history, myth, and the social conventions that shape collective memory.

Working across mediums, Olujimi excavates the language and aesthetics of cultural “inevitabilities,” rendering them visible and questioning their assumed permanence. His works have premiered at major institutions and festivals worldwide, and he has received numerous fellowships, grants, and residencies supporting his evolving practice.

ABOUT THE AWARD

Granted to artists that have participated in the residency program or had a solo exhibition at Bemis Center, this $25,000 unrestricted annual award is designed to provide financial support to increase the capacity of an alum’s practice. It is made possible by generous support from Bemis’s individual donors.

As part of Bemis Center’s 40th anniversary in 2021, the organization increased and renamed its annual Alumni Award in honor of Ree Kaneko, Bemis Center co-founder, first Executive Director, and Board Member Emerita, whose vision and passion embody the spirit of this unrestricted award and the transformational support it provides. Funds may be used for any purpose and do not need to be tied to a specific project or body of work. This award is by nomination only and is selected by a panel of renowned curators and art historians. Learn more.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kambui Olujimi was born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He received his MFA from Columbia University and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work challenges established modes of thinking that commonly function as “inevitabilities.” By excavating the language and aesthetics of social, historical, and cultural conventions, he brings them out of the world of the implicit. Once given gravity, weight, and shape it becomes possible to reveal their incongruities and their illusory nature. This pursuit takes shape through interdisciplinary bodies of work spanning sculpture, installation, photography, writing, video and performance.

His works have premiered nationally and internationally at the Sundance Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, LACMA, Sharjah Biennial 15, the 14th Dak’Art Biennale, and Kunstmuseum Basel, among others. Olujimi has been awarded grants, fellowships and residencies from Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Mellon Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, MacDowell, and Yaddo. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Art in America, Vogue and CNN. Olujimi’s work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums and public collections, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA. Gregory R. Miller & co. has recently published a hardcover monograph on Olujimi’s work entitled North Star, and his upcoming permanent commission will be unveiled at JFK International Airport in 2026.