Kevo Stero, Kibera Tours: The Knife Sharpener (2019), shown at Entrée, Bergen, in 2025. Photo: courtesy of Maasai Mbili Artist Collective and Bergen Assembly
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Maasai Mbili: from sign-writing on Kibera Drive to the Bergen Assembly.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects' own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Maasai Mbili, or M2, is Kibera's best-known art collective. It was founded in 2001 by two sign-writers, Otieno Gomba and Otieno Kota, who sold hand-painted signs along Kibera Drive. Neither is Maasai; they dressed as Maasai to draw customers, and the name stuck.
In 2003 they bought a former bar on Kibera Drive and made it their studio and gallery. It was rebuilt in brick in 2011. The collective has run children's art classes there since 2005, painted Art4Peace murals after the 2007-08 post-election violence, and in 2006 put up a Tree of Life sculpture on Kibera Drive that the Nairobi City Council later removed.
Abroad
M2 has shown at the Donau Festival in Austria (2009), the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne (2010) and the Übersee-Museum in Bremen (2013), and has exhibited in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United States. A book about the collective, edited by Sam Hopkins, was published by Contact Zones Nairobi in 2015. At the 2014 Art Auction East Africa a group work sold for Sh200,000, half of which went to the M2 art centre.
Member George "Ashif" Malamba, who died in May 2015, described the collective to the Nation this way: "Maasai Mbili is brothers. Maasai Mbili is house. Maasai Mbili is school." Member Kevo Stero built the Jobless Corner Campus installation at Kuona Trust in 2015 and was artist-in-residence at the b-side festival in Portland, UK, in 2022.
Bergen, 2025
The collective's biggest recent outing was Maasai Mbili Republic at Entrée in Bergen, Norway, part of Bergen Assembly 2025, from 11 September to 9 November 2025, with Kevo Stero and Vincent Masinde working in Bergen. Bergen Assembly listed the current members as Sharon Atieno, Otieno Gomba, Anita Kavochi, Otieno Kota, Joachim Kwaru, Xavier Makokha, Vincent Masinde, Shivan Nafula, Fabian Sakwa, Kevo Stero and Obi Vincent.
"Being an artist is a life sentence and we are serving it," Gomba told Africanah in 2016.
Sources: Africanah, 15 Sep 2016; Bergen Assembly 2025; ArtViewer, 2025; Nation; Art Auction East Africa, 2014; b-side, 2022; Business Daily, 11 Jun 2015.
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects’ own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Maasai Mbili, or M2, is Kibera’s best-known art collective. It was founded in 2001 by two sign-writers, Otieno Gomba and Otieno Kota, who sold hand-painted signs along Kibera Drive. Neither is Maasai; they dressed as Maasai to draw customers, and the name stuck.
In 2003 they bought a former bar on Kibera Drive and made it their studio and gallery. It was rebuilt in brick in 2011. The collective has run children’s art classes there since 2005, painted Art4Peace murals after the 2007-08 post-election violence, and in 2006 put up a Tree of Life sculpture on Kibera Drive that the Nairobi City Council later removed.
Abroad
M2 has shown at the Donau Festival in Austria (2009), the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne (2010) and the Übersee-Museum in Bremen (2013), and has exhibited in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United States. A book about the collective, edited by Sam Hopkins, was published by Contact Zones Nairobi in 2015. At the 2014 Art Auction East Africa a group work sold for Sh200,000, half of which went to the M2 art centre.
Member George “Ashif” Malamba, who died in May 2015, described the collective to the Nation this way: “Maasai Mbili is brothers. Maasai Mbili is house. Maasai Mbili is school.” Member Kevo Stero built the Jobless Corner Campus installation at Kuona Trust in 2015 and was artist-in-residence at the b-side festival in Portland, UK, in 2022.
Bergen, 2025
The collective’s biggest recent outing was Maasai Mbili Republic at Entrée in Bergen, Norway, part of Bergen Assembly 2025, from 11 September to 9 November 2025, with Kevo Stero and Vincent Masinde working in Bergen. Bergen Assembly listed the current members as Sharon Atieno, Otieno Gomba, Anita Kavochi, Otieno Kota, Joachim Kwaru, Xavier Makokha, Vincent Masinde, Shivan Nafula, Fabian Sakwa, Kevo Stero and Obi Vincent.
“Being an artist is a life sentence and we are serving it,” Gomba told Africanah in 2016.
KNN Newsroom is the staff byline for stories written, rewritten and edited at the Kibra News Network desk. Where a story credits an outside outlet, the original source is linked at the foot of the piece.
