Ruth Ige
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| name = Ruth Ige
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| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1992}}
| birth_place = Nigeria
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| field = painting
| training = Auckland University of Technology
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Ruth Ige (born 1992 Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria) is a Nigerian-born painter based in Auckland, New Zealand.{{Cite web |last=eloise |date=24 November 2020 |title=RUTH IGE {{!}} Aotearoa Art Fair |url=https://artfair.co.nz/alumni/p4-ruth-ige/ |access-date=7 January 2025 |language=en-NZ}} Her work was part of the major group exhibition Aotearoa Contemporary at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2024.{{Cite web |date=6 July 2024 |title=Aotearoa Contemporary |url=https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/exhibition/aotearoa-contemporary |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=Auckland Art Gallery |language=en}} 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.{{Cite web |title=Meet Ruth Ige |url=https://www.the-art-paper.com/journal/ruth-ige-aotearoa-contemporary?srsltid=AfmBOopRa6jEShWbBGL-FiE889iNSfzx627f1WKEGGbMCZ45GSmrLlDo |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=The Art Paper |language=en-NZ}} In 2016, she graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Auckland University of Technology.{{Cite web |last=eloise |date=24 November 2020 |title=RUTH IGE {{!}} Aotearoa Art Fair |url=https://artfair.co.nz/alumni/p4-ruth-ige/ |access-date=7 January 2025 |language=en-NZ}}{{Cite web |title=Melanie Roger Gallery: Ruth Ige |url=https://melanierogergallery.com/stockroom/ruth-ige/ |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=melanierogergallery.com}} One year after graduating, in 2017 she participated in her first group exhibition at Artspace in Auckland.
Art
Ige's work centers the black figure and explores blackness in relation to representation, art history, documentation, and existence. Though firmly rooted in history and the present, her paintings often delve into future imaginings. Where past, present and future collide, converse and coexist within the same space. Where the figures, roam between dimensions of history and fiction. In almost a shapeshifting manner the familiar and fantastical are constantly interchanging. She is interested in exploring the movement between two things and their coexistence: figuration and abstraction, the familiar and otherworldly, stillness and movement, beauty and pain, certainty and uncertainty, etc. Especially using secrecy and mystery as a form of empowerment in the portrayal of blackness through the constant concealing and revealing that occurs by moving between abstraction and figuration. The figures are powerfully seen, but also seem to be lovingly protected and hidden. 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.{{Cite web |title=Ruth Ige |url=https://thisisspace.co.nz/artists/ruth-ige |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=SPA_CE |language=en}} She describes her works as a love letter to the black diaspora and motherland, her paintings being a tool of healing, escape, resistance and empowerment.{{Cite web |last=STEVENSON |title=STEVENSON |url=https://www.stevenson.info/exhibition/6795 |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=STEVENSON |language=en}}
Typically, Ige uses thick, gestural brushstrokes of blue, black, and white to create compositions that present figures void of features.{{Cite web |title=Artist Ruth Ige Gives Freedom the Capacity to Dream in Paint |url=https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2022/08/30/artist-ruth-ige-gives-freedom-the-capacity-to-dream-in-paint |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=www.culturedmag.com |language=en}} 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. She has recently been using West African Indigo and various Nigerian dried leaves used by Igbo and Yoruba as painting pigments with her paintings.https://mcleaveygallery.com/exhibitions/the-poetic-notions-of-blue-a-haven/
Exhibition history
| class="wikitable"
|+ !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 Aotearoa, Auckland |Group |
{{Cite web |title=Ruth Ige |url=https://thisisspace.co.nz/artists/ruth-ige |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=SPA_CE |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Ruth Ige, The Astronomer, 2021 |url=https://gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/exhibitions/324/works/artworks-26494-ruth-ige-the-astronomer-2021/ |access-date=7 January 2025 |website=Gow Langsford |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Ruth Ige CV |url=https://bode.gallery/usr/library/documents/main/artists/111/211128.bode_ruth-ige_cv.pdf |access-date=8 January 2025 |website=BODE}}