Kenyan Boys Built Recycled Bottle Hut Sculpture On National Mall

For a week and a half brothers Isaac and Patrick Kibe used recycled bottles, glasses, bottle caps, tin, broken tiles, put together by Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage Staff for this year’s Smithsonian FolkLife Festival, to built a recycled glass-bottle hut on the Washington, D.C. mall. 

Isaac and Kibe are self-taught muralists. They have specialized in turning waste materials into masterpieces. During the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival (SFF), the Kenyan brothers created a sculpture that they said was a goose.

Kenya and China were the two countries represented in this year’s SFF that ended July 6. The two Kenyan brothers were from Kitengela Glass. It is a company that creates dwellings that are fit for human habitation, furniture, sculpture and others things from waste materials found around their community. Kitengela glass is located outside of Nairobi National Park.

As the Smithsonian wrote, “Artists from Kenya now work with recycled scrap metal, glass bottles, waste paper, broken pottery and much more. Even the tiniest shards of supposed waste are reborn at Kitengela as mosaics, sun-catchers and jewelry.” Reports say that the Smithsonian may exhibit the building/sculpture or may sell it. Nobody was sure on the last day of the SFF.