He made his name with handmade and wholly impractical spectacle frames called C-Stunners — glasses that did not even have lenses — and he is now consolidating an international reputation with bicycles you cannot ride, based on the sit-up-and-beg Black Mambas.

Yet Cyrus Kabiru is a practical man.

He is an artist who taught himself to draw, to paint, to stitch with wire, and to weld.

Aged 32 and brought up in Korogocho, Nairobi, Kabiru fashioned spectacles out of wire as a child, but began his career as an artist by making birds and then life-size musicians from bottle tops stitched together.

Then in 2006 he remembered the childhood hobby that with his new-found skills went on to bring him a touch of fame… handmade spectacles in outrageous shapes.

They amused and delighted visitors to his studio at the Kuona Trust in Nairobi and, at only $50 apiece, were cheap enough to buy on a whim.

If you found the C-Stunners amusing you could slip on a pair and have a giggle with your friends.

And if you were of a more serious disposition you could burble on about the marvellous imagination of the autodidactic mind, the power of found objects, and the Dadaist tradition that gave us Marcel Duchamps and in 1917 his Fountain made from a urinal.

Either way, word spread and these C-Stunners (the C of course standing for Cyrus) soon became collectible, helped by a black and white film called AfroFuturism shown at the old PC’s offices next to Nyayo House.

A product met its market and Kabiru found he soon had a runaway success on his hands, if not on the bridge of his nose. For oddly enough for a man who made glasses, he has perfect vision and never wears spectacles himself, even real ones.

Investors will be pleased to know that those selfsame $50 specs now change hands for upwards of $1,000 each, with one pair going to a New York collection for $4,000.

Today these entertaining pieces of trivia — or, if you prefer, cogent and important statements of the rapid thrust of change in Africa — have been exhibited around the world and are the subject of doctoral theses.

Kabiru, however, is happy to make the objects and eschew any intellectual shenanigans, commenting only: “All they mean by AfroFuturism is the way things are changing here through art and they think I have been a vehicle for that change.”

He added disarmingly: “I am not sure about this but maybe they are right and that’s why they are coming to me.”

But his glasses were yesterday.

Preserving a bit of Africa

Now he has something else to get on with — the Black Mamba sculptures soon to be shown in a solo exhibition in South Africa. It will be called Panda Shuka (Climbing Up and Down) and already they sell for around $15,000 each.

If you think that is dear, take a deep breath and consider splashing out now, because on past form they may well reach $150,000 in just a few years.

Each features the iconic black bicycles with a double crossbar for extra strength, ideal for rough country roads and a steady ride in the city.

Kabiru finds scrap bikes, then reassembles them embellished in innovative ways. He has made 15 so far to stand alone or hang on the wall as sculptures with hints of the Spanish master Joan Miro in their sharply angled and boldly coloured bits and bobs, which speak of Africa’s present and in time will record its past.

“I am making them because I like them as bicycles and they are being replaced by motorbikes everywhere, so it is my way of preserving a bit of Africa even as it becomes history,” Kabiru explained.

Not AfroFuturism then; maybe a bit of AfroPast instead.

A Black Mamba, by Cyrus Kabiru. PHOTO | FRANK WHALLEY

KABIRU FACTFILE

Solo exhibitions include:

• Upcoming, Kuona Trust, Nairobi
• Cyrus Kabiru, Kunstpodium T Gallery, Tilburg, Netherlands
• C-Stunners & Black Mamba, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town

Group exhibitions include:

• Making Africa: Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
• Concealed Selections, Studio Museum, Harlem, New York
• Towards Intersections, University of South Africa, Pretoria
• Lumières d’Afriques, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris
• AFRICA – Architecture & Identity, Louisiana Museum, Denmark
• Beyond Borders, West Flanders, Belgium
• Lagos Photo Festival, Nigeria
• AfroFuture: Adventure with Makers, Thinkers and Dreamers, Milan
• Brutal Beauty: Violence and Contemporary Design, Herford Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany

Notable collections:

• Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), South Africa;