Maggie Otieno
Artist
Biography
Maggie Otieno (b. 1974) is a Kenyan sculptor and visual artist based in Nairobi, whose practice sits at the meeting point of material experimentation, social commentary and formal abstraction. She first trained as a painter, joining the Kuona Trust Art Centre in 1996, where an encounter with the sculptor Elijah Ogira prompted a decisive move towards three-dimensional form. Drawn to the tactile and expressive possibilities of sculpture, she committed fully to the medium and developed her language largely through intuition, curiosity and sustained experimentation rather than formal academic training. Her early work engaged stone and wood as separate materials. Over time her vocabulary has grown to include found objects — above all weathered timber and rusted metal — fused into totemic compositions about the endurance of memory and the resilience of the human spirit. Her signature sculptures, often made from century-old railway sleepers, take the form of elongated, abstracted figures that hover between figuration and symbol, evoking movement, vulnerability and communal presence while reflecting on identity, history and place. In 2023 Otieno took part in The Anthropocene Museum 9.0: The Old Sharjah Slaughterhouse Tour, a project by Cave_bureau curated by Tosin Oshinowo for the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. She has also shown with Efie Gallery at Art Dubai and 1-54 London, and has undertaken a residency at the El Anatsui Studio in Ghana.