Eve & The Orishas

The painting is an allegory of the diasporic Yoruba religion, Lucumí, also called Santería. Eve and the orishas attempt to hold onto their identities, as the European powers pursue them in order to entrap them into their Western Christian narratives. In the center, Ogun, the god of war, with his machete, clears the path for Eve while stepping on the pages of the fluttering European medieval manuscripts. Overhead, Shango and Oya lead the way, while Obatalá, the creator of all humankind in white, attempts to help Eve by pulling her up in an act of ascension. On the ground, Oshun and Yemayá fall into a tangle of bodies in their hurried escape. In between them lies Erinle, the orisha of the in-between space where river (Oshun) and ocean (Yemayá) meet. Modeled after Rubens’s painting Consequences of War (1628), Eve and the Orishas also portrays the horrors of war and the trampling of innocence.