Ancestral Ecologies - Brooklyn Botanic Garden
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Ancestral Ecologies
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Ancestral Ecologies

Exhibits

May 23–October 25, 2026

Ancestral Ecologies offers four multisensory installations that explore animist frameworks through distinct environmental and material phenomena. These include forms of adaptation and sustainability both occurring in nature and practiced by diasporic cultures.

Created by Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous and the environmental art and architecture practice AD—WO, the 2026 Heidi Nitze Art × Environment Fellows, the work explores ancient Latinx and African Diasporic beliefs around the intelligence of the natural world that understand matter, memory, and multispecies forces as interconnected, adapted, and communicative. Animism recalls Indigenous kinship philosophies that recognize the vitality of all living beings, standing in contrast to human-centered frameworks and opening new ways of imagining ecological relationships.

Outdoor Exhibits

  • An angled tower constructed of translucent colored panels rises above a field.

    Serpentine Specter

    Native Flora Garden

    Through bio-derived fibers and kiln-fired colored glass, this vertical sculpture embodies its site’s serpentine barren and prairie ecology, where ancient geological processes, harsh rock terrains, and metal-rich soils have given rise to specialized life forms, regenerative and rich with adaptation.

  • Strands of beads formed of natural objects like seeds hang In a concrete window frame.

    Sonic Strands

    Woodland Garden

    Historically potent materials from Afrodiasporic, Latinx, and Indigenous Brooklyn—the African sea bean, recycled glass trade beads, and cowrie shells—are strung together with public participation. They map the histories of movement and cultural continuity in Brooklyn as a collective of artistic voices. Wind and vibration from passersby activate a subtle sonic field that registers these intertwined cultural and ecological complexities.

  • An object that looks like a mossy rock has an angular form and purple crystal insets.

    Animist Capsules

    Woodland Garden

    This series traces succession, from rock to moss to fungi, where decomposition becomes a source of continual renewal. By embedding culturally relevant sculptural forms into decaying wood and eroding limestone, these installations host, extend, and reveal ecological processes rather than interrupt them.

  • Two people observe a large installation of tiles in many shades of brown on a grassy area surrounded by trees and plants.

    Earthen Tiles

    Native Flora Garden Exterior

    This sculpture brings subsoil to the surface in the form of hand-molded earthen tiles, revaluing long-held nonwestern practices of soil-based construction as inherited knowledge systems of endurance and resourcefulness across the global diaspora.

  • People select beads and string them.

    Ancestral Ecologies

    Conservatory Gallery

    A special behind-the-scenes look at the artists’ process and the science, culture, and community informing these works.

About the Artists

  • Two men stand outdoors amid autumn trees—one in a black T-shirt and gold chains with arms crossed, the other in a yellow beanie and argyle sweater holding a small black notebook.

    Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous and the environmental art and architecture practice AD—WO collaborated with community members, climate scientists, and BBG’s horticulturists to create their project supported by the Heidi Nitze Art × Environment Fellowship. Learn More

Support

The Heidi Nitze Art × Environment Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of the Heidi Nitze Foundation.

Image, top of page: Olalekan Jeyifous