Onyis Martin

Multi-award-winning artist, Onyis Martin was born in Kisumu, Kenya in 1987 and moved to Nairobi when he was six. Growing up, aside from school he kept himself out of trouble by playing football and doing art. When he graduated from high school, he rejected his father’s wish that he go to university and instead launched full time into fine art, which he initially developed through apprenticeships at the Godown Arts Centre and Kuona Trust in Nairobi. He is now based out of the Kobo Trust, where along with other artists, he mentors and facilitates aspiring artists with opportunities to develop their talent.

Experimenting with a wide range of materials, Martin explores the human condition and the global geo-political interface, specifically through issues surrounding human trafficking, migration, corruption and displacement. Additionally, he explores matters surrounding communication, the rapidly changing technological environment and the consumerism that surrounds it. Using his personal experience as a point of departure, he interweaves individual and collective experiences highlighting the varying yet similar experiences people have in different places globally. In his most recent group of works, Talking Walls (2016), Martin exte...

2006 Aquinas High School, Nairobi/ Kenya
2010 Mukuru Art and Craft, Nairobi/ Kenya
2013 Neuro Linguistic Programming and Family Constellation

2019 Before tomorrow comes, Eclectica contemporary, Capetown
Still here tomorrow to high five you yesterday, Zeitz Mocca museum

Nairobi Here we art, Out Of Africa gallery, Barcelona




2018 A better world through creativity group exhibition, Kerry Parker Civic
Gallery,Adelaide, South Australia.

Performances of memory Absa gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa


2017

Be-com-ing Redhill Gallery, Nairobi/ Kenya
Talking walls Kerry Parker Civic Gallery, Adelaide, South Australia
Tomorrows/today Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town/ South Africa
Salon zurcher Zurcher Gallery, New york / USA
Proximity to power Circle Art Gllery, Nairobi, Kenya

2016
Freedom / flight / refuge Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi/ Kenya
154 art fair Somerset House, London/England
In-conversations The Lab, Nairobi/ Kenya ...