Sojourner: The Difference is the Same

Sojourner: The Difference Is the Same’ marks Maggie Otieno’s debut solo exhibition with Efie Gallery, presenting a new body of mixed media sculptural works that build on her sustained engagement with reclaimed materials and their embedded histories. Working primarily with distressed timber, including 150-year-old railway sleepers, alongside metal, Otieno shifts reclaimed materials beyond their original function, allowing them to inhabit new sculptural forms. Through processes of assembling and reconfiguring, what once signified movement is redirected towards stillness and contemplation, where fragmentation and balance shape the work’s presence. The exhibition reflects on continuity and change, on what is carried forward and what is reshaped over time. Through the quiet transformation of material, Otieno invites viewers into a space where difference and sameness coexist, and where sculpture becomes a vessel for memory and passage.