MEET
Onyis Martin
Onyis Martin was born in 1987 in Kenya. He is a Nairobi-based artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and, more recently, video.
Onyis Martin trained in neurolinguistic programming and family constellation therapy methods. However, previously, in 2006, he left Nairobi's Aquinas Secondary School to train in 2010 at the arts centre, Mukuru Art and Craft.
Martin's work focuses on contemporary urban environments and how these spaces are shaped by the politics of ownership and access, movement and displacement, and how they contain some form of collective memory.
Martin has exhibited in Kenya and Ethiopia, as well as at Absa Gallery, South Africa in 2018 and Kerry Parker Civic Gallery, Adelaide, Australia in 2018. He has participated in residencies at Bag Factory, Johannesburg in 2017, Asiko Art School in 2016, The Factory in Lamu in 2016, Ostrale in Germany in 2015 and won first prize for merit at the 2017 ABSA L'Atelier Award.
He held his first institutional exhibition in 2019, participating in Still Tomorrow to High Five You Yesterday, a group exhibition at Zeitz MoCAA in Cape Town, South Africa.