Opening at Efie Gallery on 23 September, Sojourner: The Difference Is the Same brings the Kenyan sculptor’s decades-long relationship with discarded materials into a new body of work shaped by journeys, histories and transformation.
Before entering Maggie Otieno’s studio, many of the materials she works with have already travelled considerable distances.
Some have crossed countries. Others have spent decades exposed to weather, machinery and human activity. Railway sleepers, pieces of metal and fragments of wooden canoes arrive bearing scratches, fractures and signs of use that another maker might attempt to remove. Otieno does the opposite. She begins with what those surfaces already contain.
That relationship between material and memory forms the centre of Sojourner: The Difference Is the Same, opening at Efie Gallery in Dubai on 23 September. Running until 13 November 2026, the exhibition is Otieno’s first solo presentation with the gallery since joining its programme in 2024.
For an artist whose practice has developed over almost three decades, the exhibition offers another chapter in a long-running investigation into what happens when objects outlive their original purpose.
Wood that remembers
Central to the exhibition are railway sleepers dating back more than 150 years.
Originally transported from India to East Africa during the late nineteenth century, the timbers became part of railway infrastructure that connected places while also becoming entangled with histories of colonial expansion, labour and migration.
By the time they reach Otieno, however, they no longer perform the function for which they were made.
She cuts, combines and positions them alongside metal and other elements, creating tall sculptural forms that occasionally suggest the human figure without fully becoming one. Their age remains visible: cracks, uneven surfaces and traces of previous use become part of how each sculpture is read.
Otieno first became interested in working with reclaimed railway sleepers in 2017, when she encountered a collection of the old timbers and began imagining sculptural possibilities within them.
There is something particularly resonant about that transformation. Wood once designed to support continuous movement is brought into the gallery and made stationary. The viewer is asked not to travel across it, but to stand before it.
Another journey begins in Ghana
Sojourner also introduces a different material history into Otieno’s practice.
During a residency at El Anatsui Studio in Tema, Ghana, in 2025, the artist began working with fragments of wooden canoes. Several of the resulting sculptures appear in the Dubai exhibition. In some works, pieces of the boats are joined with hinges so that their forms recall an open book.
The gesture creates an intriguing connection between two bodies of material in the exhibition.
Railway sleepers belong to journeys across land; canoes belong to journeys across water. Both were constructed for movement, both have been shaped by human hands and repeated use, and both eventually reached the end of their practical lives.
Otieno gives them another destination.
Rather than attempting to return these objects to their former state, she allows their histories to remain legible while changing the context in which we encounter them. A fragment of infrastructure becomes sculpture. Part of a boat begins to resemble a page. Something discarded becomes worthy of sustained attention.
From painting to sculpture
Otieno’s sensitivity to materials developed gradually.
She began her career as a painter in the late 1990s before encountering sculpture through an artists’ workshop. Working with welding equipment and grinders initially intimidated her, but she gradually taught herself to manipulate different materials and developed the combination of wood and metal now associated with her practice.
Today, her work extends from the studio into Nairobi’s public landscape. Large-scale installations by the artist can be found at locations including railway stations and Garden City Mall, while her work has been exhibited internationally across Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
Much of the work appearing in Sojourner emerged from her studio in Karen, Nairobi, within The Bric-A-Brac, an art centre Otieno designed and built.
Her method does not begin by forcing material into a predetermined idea. The physical character of what she finds—the weight of a piece of timber, a damaged surface, an unexpected shape—can influence where the work eventually goes.
That makes time almost another material within the sculptures.
What remains after the journey?
The exhibition’s title, The Difference Is the Same, introduces a productive contradiction.
Something can change and still carry what it was before.
That idea appears repeatedly throughout the exhibition. Railway sleepers become sculptural bodies, yet their weathered surfaces remain. Canoes cease travelling across water, yet evidence of those journeys survives. Industrial fragments enter the gallery without completely surrendering their previous identities.
Perhaps that is what makes Otieno’s use of reclaimed material compelling. Transformation, in her work, does not depend on erasure.
Instead, the past is permitted to remain visible inside the new.
In Dubai, these materials have arrived somewhere they were never designed to reach. They now stand inside a gallery, removed from railways, workshops and waterways, asking viewers to reconsider what an object’s history might mean once its original purpose has disappeared.
For Sojourner, the journey is therefore not simply about where these materials have been.
It is about what they can still become.
Maggie Otieno: Sojourner: The Difference Is the Same is on view from 23 September to 13 November 2026 at Efie Gallery, Warehouse 61, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE. The gallery is open Monday–Sunday; visit efiegallery.com for opening hours.
Otieno’s work is also included in Resounding Rhizomes at Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI), Kenya, from 25 September 2026 to 10 January 2027.
