"My 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, my paintings often delve into future imaginings. I am interested in creating images that are not easily understood, where there is this sense of being outside of a specific place or time. Where past, present and future collide, converse and coexisting 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. I am interested 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. Overall, my main aim is to explore and show the multiplicity of blackness" (Ruth Ige, 2024)

Ruth Ige was born in 1992 in Nigeria, and lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. She graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Auckland University of Technology in 2016.

"And you are of the heavens and of the earth", her first exhibition in Cape Town, took place in May 2024, following "Freedom’s recurring dream", her gallery debut in Johannesburg (2022). Previous solo exhibitions include "Between Two Dimensions" at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles (2022); "The poetic notions of blue" at McLeavey Gallery, Wellington (2021); "A Place Apart", a two-person show at City Gallery, Wellington (2020) and "Traces of Secrecy", RM Gallery, Auckland (2017).

Ige has participated in group exhibitions at Stevenson, Cape Town (2021-23); McLeavey Gallery, Wellington (2020); Karma, New York (2019); ST PAUL St Gallery, Auckland (2019); The Vivian, Matakana (2018); and Artspace, Auckland (2017).  She currently has newly commissioned work in the major exhibition "Aotearoa Contemporary" at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

Ige will exhibit new work as part of a group exhibition "The Secret Life of Plants" at Melanie Roger Gallery in October 2024