# Ruth Ige

Ruth Ige (born 1992) is a Nigerian-born painter based in Auckland, New Zealand. Her work was part of the major group exhibition Aotearoa Contemporary at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2024. She has been part of multiple solo and group exhibitions, notably participating in several international exhibitions.

## Background

Ige is of Yoruba descent on her father's side and Igbo descent on her mother's side. In 2016, she graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Auckland University of Technology. One year after graduating, in 2017 she participated in her first group exhibition at Artspace in Auckland.

## Art

Ige draws on the dramatic, regal and elegant Nigerian fashion as her main inspiration for her painting, noting that precolonial and present-day Nigerian clothing is a work of art in itself. She also notes it is important for her to display African culture through a contemporary lens, exhibiting the traditional, contemporary, and futuristic aspects in her works. As such, her works, while rooted in history and the present, also explore future imaginings. The figures often existent in her paintings interchangeably shift between history and fiction, familiar and fantastical, recognisable and otherworldly. As such, Ige aims for her works to be difficult to stereotype due to their abstract, mysterious qualities, creating narratives within her paintings that are enigmatic and unexpected. She describes her works as a love letter to the black diaspora, her paintings being a tool of healing, escape, resistance and empowerment.
Typically, Ige uses thick, gestural brushstrokes of blue, black, and white to create compositions that present figures void of features. In an interview with the Art Paper magazine, Ige explained that she has a deep love of blue, and by using it as her main colour, the viewer can become more immersed in the space. She also connects with the cultural significance of blue, which has been a colour to carry language and symbolise legacy, dignity and protection, which therefore envelopes the figures in her works, protecting them.

## Exhibition history

| Year | Exhibition | Location | Solo or Group |
| 2024 | Aotearoa Contemporary | Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland | Group |
| 2024 | And you are of the heavens of the earth | Stevenson, Cape Town | Solo |
| 2024 | Summer Paintings | Gow Langsford, Auckland | Group |
| 2022 | Between Two Dimensions | Robert Projects, Los Angeles | Solo |
| 2021 | The poetic notions of blue | McLeavey Gallery, Wellington | Solo |
| 2021 | My Whole Body Changed into Something Else | Stevenson, Cape Town | Group |
| 2020 | A Place Apart | City Gallery, Wellington | Duo |
| 2020 | Three Painters | McLeavey Gallery, Wellington | Group |
| 2019 | Group Show | Karma, New York | Group |
| 2019 | Two Oceans at Once | ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland | Group |
| 2019 | Pleiades: Seven Sisters of New Zealand | Gow Langsford, Auckland | Group |
| 2019 | On the Verge of Blue | SPA_CE, Napier | Group |
| 2018 | The Silence Before the Morning | Weasel Gallery, Hamilton | Solo |
| 2018 | Never an Answer: 12 Abstract Painters | The Vivian, Matakana | Group |
| 2018 | LISTE Art Fair Basel | Switzerland | Group |
| 2017 | Dirt Future | Artspace, Auckland | Group |