Jamal Cyrus

Houston, Texas

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Jamal Cyrus

Jamal Cyrus (born 1973, Houston, TX) received a BFA from the University of Houston in 2004 and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. In 2005 he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and in 2010 he was an Artist in Residence at Artpace San Antonio. Cyrus has won several awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the Artadia Houston Award, and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. He has participated in national and international exhibitions, including The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 – Now, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (traveled to ICA Philadelphia, 2016); Arresting Patterns, ArtSpace, New Haven, CT (traveled to the African American Museum in Philadelphia, 2016); two exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem (both 2013); the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2012); and the New Museum, New York (2011).

Program Participation

Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2019

Website / Social Links

I see my work as a form of self-education. Due to the illegality of teaching the enslaved to read and write, and the subsequent lack of access to education following Emancipation and well into the middle of the 20th Century, the action of teaching oneself has a long history within Black culture. This concept, is of course, multidisciplinary, appendaging itself through practical, political, and spiritual import.”