Jamal Cyrus

Courtesy of the artist and PATRON Gallery

Jamal Cyrus (b. 1973, Houston, TX; lives in Houston) explores the evolution of African American identity within Black political movements and the African diaspora. His conceptual and research-driven practice uses collage and assemblage to transform mundane materials into rich, densely layered vessels of meaning. He is especially attuned to the cross-cultural hybrids that emerge across history—from Ancient Egypt and the sixteenth-century transatlantic slave trade to the Harlem Jazz Age and the civil rights movements of the 1960s. This work explicitly evokes jazz through the title Ohnedaruth, which is a sanskrit word for compassion that was adopted by John and Alice Coltrane and referenced in their music. Cyrus’s work is in the MCA Collection and was included in the recent MCA exhibitions Grain of a Hand: Drawings with Graphite (2021–22) and Faith Ringgold: American People (2023–24). In 2022 Cyrus was the subject of a survey exhibition organized by the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston.