Meet Ruth Ige
Twenty-two of Aotearoa’s best ascendant artists and collectives are showing work at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki right now in Aotearoa Contemporary, an exhibition celebrating a new guard of creatives and ideas.
The Art Paper × Aotearoa Contemporary presents conversations with the artists, exploring the work they’re showing and what they’re drawing inspiration from. Here, we speak to artist RUTH IGE about her paintings featured in the show.
Photography: Felix Jackson
Ruth Ige in front of her artworks in Aotearoa Contemporary, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Photo: Felix Jackson
The way you clothe your figures is suggestive of a classical era—they wear elaborate headpieces, ruffle-necked shirts and flowing capes. At the same time, the work titles evoke the future, and the way of painting itself creates this watery space, suggesting the eternity of the ocean. Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua, one of the show’s curators, wrote something I really liked in their text on your work, saying that “viewing a Ruth Ige painting is less like looking at a monument than gazing into the sea.” It seems like there’s a really interesting play on time taking place. Could you speak to that—how you’re thinking through these different tenses?
Yes definitely. Time is quite an important aspect of my paintings, but also the act of going beyond its constraints and not playing by its rules. There is a reverence for time, but also an irreverence.
I really see it as a conversation with the past, present and the future. I have removed the demarcations that separate them. So, within the paintings, these three times coexist within the same plane. Through that, you have this space which has become an amalgamation of time, in which these figures in my paintings exist. I found an old journal recently with a statement I wrote, which I feel captures this essence: “Everyone from the past, present and future could live together here. Life nor death could separate them. Nor could the borders between the heavens and the earth.” It is quite beautiful imagery.
Creating a space where the ancestors before us, and life and its essence, are allowed passage into the present and future freely, and those of the present and future are granted that same access. For me, to fully explore blackness in its totality and in a holistic way, I must look at all the parts. To understand the present, I must understand the past. To go to the future, I must bring the past and present with me. So, in my art practice, I am looking at history, contemporary life and experience whilst exploring the future through the tradition of speculative fiction.
The core of my practice is exploring Blackness in relation to representation, art history, history, documentation and existence. By freeing time from its own boundaries, I can explore these topics in an unrestricted and new way. A good example of this is Yoruba woman (year 2031). Painting was a way to document human existence before the creation of the camera. So right now, in 2024 you see a portrait of a Yoruba woman, but through the title you see that it is a documentation of someone in 2031 in the future. There is this convergence of the now with the future whilst using this historical way of documentation, a play on time and documentation. I could write pages and pages unpacking this.
The blue feels very cinematic. I think of that scene in Moonlight where they go swimming, and in Girlhood when they dance to Rihanna in the room lit entirely in blue. Or, in a different way, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, where the ivory-coloured dresses all the women wear help to create this feeling that the film is taking place in another world formed around Blackness and Black womanhood. Interestingly, the matriarch of the family is distinguished by her dress, which is dyed with indigo, and Kerry James Marshall, the portraitist, was the film’s production designer. Where do you draw inspiration from for the costumes in your paintings?
I draw inspiration from so many places. I love fashion. I would almost say that fashion is my second love, so that shows up heavily in the paintings, naturally. Both consciously and subconsciously. My main inspiration comes from precolonial and present-day African fashion. More specifically, Nigerian fashion. Nigerian clothing is dramatic, regal and elegant. It commands the room. The silhouettes we wear are quite avant garde to me.
I am Yoruba on my father’s side and Igbo on my mother’s side. In two of the paintings in the show, the figures are wearing these structures on their heads. We call it a Gele in Yoruba. It is a headscarf and is quite a sculptural thing. They are often very large and extravagant. They are worn as part of the Yoruba woman traditional wear which consists of a Buba (blouse), Iro (wrapper) and Ipele (shawl). Geles are worn to any event, from parties to formal events. They can be dressed up or down. I was interested in bringing in this aspect of culture that is quite a staple, but which is also a work of art. Gele tying is quite an artform and takes immense skill. They even have Gele tying services, and auto Geles now. An auto Gele is pretty much a premade Gele that has already been pre-tied into an elaborate design and sewn in place to keep its sculptural form. Often my figures have just an oval head with no hair, but I wanted these figures to wear a Gele, because African culture is often not seen through a contemporary lens. In a way, the Gele shows that Africanness is contemporary. It always has been from the very beginning. It is traditional, it is contemporary, and it is futuristic.
In relation to the blue of my paintings and clothing my figures wear, that is inspired by my undying love of blue, but also by certain important fabrics within Nigeria culture. We have ancient kano dye pits in Nigeria that have been there for centuries where a long tradition of indigo fabric dying has been taking place. There is an indigenous Indigo Yoruba fabric—I’m kind of wearing it now—it’s called Adire. In Yoruba culture indigo represents love. So indigo holds quite a deep meaning. Traditionally, adire are these fabrics that hold transcriptions and symbols of wisdom, parables, folktales, mythology, encouragement, knowledge, history and blessings. At times, the patterns are more abstract, like the one I am wearing today. There is also another indigo fabric called Ukara cloth that is a part of Igbo culture and other groups. It originated from a secret society. The Ukara cloth has a coded language drawn upon it called Nsibidi. This fabric is extremely hard to find, I’m still trying to find some to purchase.
Through these cultural fabrics, I see that blue has been a colour used to carry language, pass down language and preserve it. By it being worn upon the vessel that is our bodies, I see that blue has been this symbol of legacy, dignity and protection. I feel in a way I am tapping into this tradition by creating these blue abstract paintings shrouded in mystery where elements of it are concealed and revealed. The blue envelopes, embraces and protects the figures.
That sense of protection or privacy is so interesting in the works. The blue is quite luminous, so in the right lighting, the paintings sort of glow and create this light field in the hall where they are hung, beckoning viewers toward them from a distance. But then when you look at the paintings directly, the intense colour shrouds the figures pictured. The paintings disrupt their own magnetism in a way.
Multiplicity is quite important for me. I want my work to show multiplicity, the multiplicity of Blackness. The unending and ever unfolding nature of it. I show that multiplicity in a number of ways.
One of the ways is how the figures are presented. I think some people read the figures as being veiled, but I see it as an act of concealing and revealing. With every interaction as humans, we are always concealing parts of ourselves and revealing others as we navigate space. This is especially true within the Black experience. I show this act of concealing and revealing through the visual and conceptual conversation that is happening between abstraction and figuration. Through this, the figures are still powerfully seen, but also lovingly protected.
I started out as an abstract painter and did not paint the figure at all in art school until the final graduation project. As I was researching more, I felt like there were not enough resources on Black artists, that our imprint in art history had not been documented or had been excluded. So, it made me start thinking about the Black figure within Art History, and my experiences as a Black woman in the world. As a woman born in Nigeria, who then lived in Botswana for many years soon after, and then grew up in New Zealand, looking at Blackness globally is important to me. Understanding how Blackness is viewed and how it is treated within space, how that influences the way we are treated, through a historical lens, an art historical lens, a political lens.
Stagnant views and stereotypes on what Blackness is are harmful. That is also why I explore and employ speculative fiction, as a way of presenting and accessing the multiplicity of blackness. We have all seen how, when a Black character is added to a Sci-Fi or Fantasy TV show or film, people react strongly, because they do not think Blackness belongs in that space. They don’t think that’s what Blackness is. Sci-fi and speculative fiction has always been part of black culture and tradition. It is a form of language I have been drawn to since I was a child writing short stories. In the Black community, speculative fiction has been used to talk about injustices, access freedom and create places of escape, self-care and empowerment. I am honouring that tradition through how I approach time, the figures, the titles and the poetry I often present with the paintings. By keeping the palettes limited to the blue, I am world-building in a way; the viewer can be immersed or taken to another space. Pairing that with the tool of mystery and secrecy creates this enigmatic atmosphere. The viewer is left not knowing all that is going on. The clues that people use to create fixed meanings and readings are concealed. Instead, questions arise: Who are these figures? Where are they? What time are they from? Are they from this planet or another world? I toy with those questions and with their answers as well. I want there to be this sense of constant revelation as one is viewing the works. A fluctuation, but also an embodiment of two or more things. The mundane and otherworldly, history and fiction, abstraction and figuration, concealing and revealing, certainty and uncertainty, joy and sorrow etc. Things are always emerging, building and growing.
Finally, a question we are asking all of the artists involved in Aotearoa Contemporary: What does ‘contemporary’ mean to you?
African art or African culture isn’t often seen through a contemporary lens. I hate to say this word, because I find it highly offensive, but people often categorise anything from Africa as ‘primitive’. That term has been used to belittle, erase and exclude African art and culture, when often we were ahead of our time. Picasso was influenced by African masks and was deemed innovative, but the cultures he borrowed from were seen as less than. I think that says a lot.
I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity and thankful to the curators and people involved who believed in the vision of my work. For this exhibition, I was intentional about bringing African culture into a major contemporary art institution. I also just wanted to create something intimate and mystical, where these characters have made a space for themselves. It is a celebration of marginalised people who, despite it all, built and created legacies and cities within the havens of their words, works and communities.
_ _ _ _ _ _
Ruth Ige is a Nigerian-born artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology.
Aotearoa Contemporary is on at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki from 6 July–20 October 2024. Entry is free.
Related Reading
