Description (Physical description)
From Eden to Ecocide: A Tale of Human Impact I. First image in a triptych painted in acrylics by Enotie Ogbobor (2023) depicting the evolution of the environment and man's relationship with it, from adaptation to dominance and ending in destruction.
Panel one- three dinosaurs and the evolution of man from a crouching ape to a woman holding a mobile phone, updating the usual patriarchal depictions of men with a woman without whom there is no continuity.

Panel two- A mythological leopard with bright spots runs between the first and second image and represents the extinction of the species in the Benin region. In the trees in the central panel are three Ahianmwẹ-Ọrọ birds (yellow area) also known as the bird of prophecy, an elephan (symbolising chiefdoms), butterflies, an ẹkpẹn (leopard). The ẹkpẹn n’oha (wild leopard) was often compared to the Oba (ekpen-n’owa, the house-leopard personified), and Nigerian white-throated guenons (also known red-bellied monkeys), a lion, crocodiles (often regarded as the 'policemen' of Olokun, the god of the water), three ibis (red area), and a flock of white-bellied kingfishers (Alcedo leucogaster), in the yellow and pink planes between the jungle scene.

Panel three- a cityscape with towers, bisected by a red road, clouds of smoke and pollution, illuminated by the mechanical yellow lights and felled trees (purple)
Event Date 15/5/2023
Author: rachel hand

Context (Production / use)
Produced in Cambridge during a 4-week residency at MAA
Event Date 15/5/2023
Author: rachel hand

Context (Field collection)
Commissioned from the artist as part of the project Taking Care: Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care (1 October 2019- October 2023) which places ethnographic and world cultures museums at the centre of the search for possible strategies to address these issues. Alarming environmental shifts and crises have raised public awareness about the future of the planet. While planetary in cause and scale, the negative effects of the climate crisis are unequally distributed, affecting most intensely some whose positions are already extremely fragile, including Indigenous and formerly colonized peoples and contributing to rising global insecurity and inequality. The major environmental risks are connected with other issues, including political instability, failures or alleged failures of democratic government, and the rise of populism, racism and associated expressions of intolerance.

Our claim is that world culture museums should no longer be conceived primarily as repositories of heritage to be preserved. They are places of encounter and practice, of social experimentations and innovation, of knowledges and skills, where diverse ways of knowing and being in and with the world, and narratives of diversity can be (re)discovered, co-created and publicly shared. In our time, of crisis and political polarisation, such caring and careful spaces are needed more than ever.

Enotie Ogbebor notes [The artwork] traces the prehistoric, historic, colonial and postcolonial linkages that has led to the devastation of the environment using Okomu National Park as a case study while channelling similar circumstances globally.'


Event Date 15/5/2023
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
Katie Carter (2024) From Eden to Ecocide: A Tale of Human Impact. Returning back to Eden from Ecocide with Enotie Ogbebor
(https://museums.cam.ac.uk/story/from-eden-to-ecocide/)

Event Date 18/3/2025
Author: Rachel Hand