Nairobi — A State of Mind Cooperation Goethe-Institut Nairobi ...

Peterson Kamwathi Waweru
Peterson Kamwathi Waweru started practicing art at the
Kuona Trust art studios. His work is an attempt to
interrogate his social, economic, and cultural position. He
has for some time now been focusing on the anatomy and
psychology of queues, where the administrative and social
place of queues has tended to act as a manifestation of
humanities’ upheavals and shifts. Kamwathi is currently
researching the place, role, and meaning of processions in
contemporary ceremonies and protocols.
Kamwathi has had four solo exhibitions to date and his
work has been exhibited in Kenya, Great Britain, the USA,
Holland, Austria, El Salvador, and Finland. He participated
in the exchange program of the Fontys School of Fine and
Performing Arts, Tilburg, the Netherlands in 2003; the
Kenya Artists-in-Residence Program at the University of
Kentucky in 2005; printmaking residencies at the London
Print Studio and Bath Spa University College in 2006;
Thupelo International Artists 2006 Workshop in Rorke’s
Drift, South Africa in 2006; the Wasanii International
Artists Workshop in 2004, 2006, and 2008; and Art Omi
International Artists Residency program, New York, in
2009; the Nairobi Arts Trust’s Amnesia Conversations and
the Jet-Lag Experiment Project in 2008 and 2009; artist-
in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten
2010; Dak’Art Biennale of Contemporary African Art,
Dakar, Senegal, 2010; Sommerakademie Zentrum Paul Klee,
Bern, Switzerland, 2011; and Civitella Ranieri Fellowship,
Italy, 2012. He lives in Kiambu, Kenya.
Maasai Mbili
Maasai Mibili (in translation »Two Maasais«) is a commu-
nity based artist group that was started in 2001 by two
artists, Otieno Gomba and Otieno Kota, who initially
worked as sign writers in Kibera. Today Maasai Mbili has
eight active members (and a handful of promising
students/aspiring members closely connected to the core
group). None of the members are Maasais. The name of the
group demonstrates rather the humoristic approach the M2
group takes to its work. In 2003 M2 acquired a space, a
two story structure, originally a pub, and turned it into a
studio and a gallery, »The M2 Art Centre«. Almost all of
M2’s activities are focused on Kiberan development,
through community interaction. Maasai Mbili is an offi-
cially registered community based organization (CBO), and
as such the group has for years been a strong and indepen-
dent, active and well-known force within Kibera based
community development, its achievements have repeatedly
been acclaimed, most recently by the American ambassa-
dor, who visited the M2 Art Centre to thank them for their
peace-keeping activities during post-election violence.
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