Enotie Ogbebor

Artists from Nigeria

Enotie Ogbebor is a renowned and multidimensional Artist who works out of a seven floor studio in Benin city, Edo State, Nigeria. Enotie's works draw a lot of inspiration from the Benin culture and the global corpus of Art masterpieces that abound in every nook and cranny of his country Nigeria, Africa and the world. the need to preserve cultural heritage to intentionally hand this as good descendants to future generations, so we can be responsible ancestors someday.

The harrowing issues of environmental degradation and the evil scourge of human trafficking in the 21st century are amongst the contemporary issues he seeks to address. We are losing our forests at an alarming rate, animals are going extinct in our bushes and our people are desperately being trafficked

Enotie has established an Art residency for young artists called The Edo Global Art Foundation Headquarters. Enotie paints, sculpts, performs, composes music and he is interested in documentaries and short animation videos.

Through the activities of the Edo Global Art Foundation several workshops and programs have trained over 800 people in the various aspects of arts and culture practice, they are vendor partners to The Smithsonian institute of Art, have collaborated with the SOAS university, MAA cambridge University, Pitt rivers museum Oxford University, Humboldt Forum Berlin, MARKK museum Hamburg, Grassi-Museum Liepzig, SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, EMOWAA for several trainings,workshops and culture labs at the studio in Benin city.

Over 150 visual artist both painters and sculptors have been trained, Several workshops organised with local, national and international participants leveraging technology. There have been several workshops with renown Artists as guest facilitators passing knowledge to several Art students and young Artists.

Enotie is an activist for the restitution of Benin artifacts and has delivered papers at the Royal academy of Arts London, the British museum, the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology Cambridge University, spoken at conferences and given extensive interviews to the BBC, the New york times, financial times london, Aljazeera, DW to make his views on the restitution of the Benin Bronzes , the restitution of rights, dignity and knowledge. His views have focused on the importance of culture and art in the development of our Planet.

He has been involved the Benin Dialogue Group as a steering committee member to facilitate the framework which has lead to the heightened interest and restitution of The Benin Bronzes.

He was also involved in the EMOWAA Trust as a founding director representing the Edo State Government for the realization of the construction of Edo Museum of West African Arts EMOWAA which is designed by Sir David Adjaye OBE.This is also part of a larger cultural district being developed in the heart of Benin city.

Enotie has participated in many group exhibitions and had some solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, his works have been acquired by The British Museum, The Stedelijk museum Amsterdam, the Grassi-Museum Liepzig, the Cambridge University museum Cambridge UK , the MARKK-HAMBURG.DE Germany etc.

He is a visiting Fellow of the Cambridge University 2021 and Artist in residence in Cambridge 2022/2024. Enotie is a 2021 fellow of the DAAD artist residency program in Berlin and will be opening his solo exhibition at the British museum in July 2023.