The works are captured with flowing feminine impact. This emphasized femininity, playing with a dark hue of blue expresses and counters the traditional light and grandiose contexts that masculine depictions of the divine are depicted in the Western context.
Themba Tsotsi on the work of Ruth Ige
Protected by heavan, 2024
From Heaven and Earth
Artist Ruth Ige had an exhibition at Stevenson gallery in Cape Town in May June. It was her solo exhibition which featured acrylic based paintings that explore ideas of the divine and the secular as social and psychological orientation facilities in the Western context. The works are notified by predominantly blue paintings, with mythical and ethereal figures and characters that express notions or assorts of myth as created and evolving.
The article will show that this was achieved by rendering the works with invented settings and contexts, in order for them to affect the narrative of erasure the divine is imbued with in the Western context. There figures with no facial features or identifiable features, the goal being to impact how erasure as an abstract social construct enables those that are erased to participate in it. This she achieved by depicting liminal and spectral spaces that articulate a coming together of what is divine and earthly. Ige attempts to question this ethic in contexts are free from specific cultural and spiritual contexts in order to express what is universal about divinity.
Angels, 2024
This is reflected in the work titled “Angels”, beings standing next to each other in front of a group of people dressed in blue and light blue garb, in the tradition of a Muslim dress, the top of their heads are depicted, shown as if they are watching the angels. The angles are covered head to toe with their wings with their featureless dark faces. The work has a spectral element to it, articulated like some context of liminality, where what is earthly and heavenly meet.
A place with no name, 2024
The work titled “A place with no name” also continued this liminal theme in the exhibition. What is liminal is devoid of both what is heavenly and expressed as what aspires for what is divine in earthly terms. She depicted a single dark faced figure with arms open in the middle of light blue mountainous context. The piece has a serene quality, it the tangibility of acrylic adds a mystical element to the work that enables it to be consistent with the theme of liminality and what is phantasmal.
Garden in the clouds, 2024
“Garden in the clouds” also placed an emphasis on contexts of liminality, a solitary feminine figure amongst flowers and thick misty clouds surrounding her. With this piece there is a measure of poignancy. The notion of garden and clouds together are not contradictory in its narrative, rather the title affects a sense of expectation and realised divinity or cleanliness that both notions evoke. The artist eschewed how traditional depiction of clouds and gardens are related to the psyche. She rather created a myth of mutuality and liminality.
The word liminal has connotations of spaces related transition and spiritual connections. Relating black bodies to a universal understanding of what is liminal and divine, affects the narrative of erasure that masculine and patriarchal notions of the divine are imbued with in the Western context. Ige deliberately chose to depict feminine black figures in the works. What this choice did was in an abstract and latent measure evoke how the feminine is an embodiment of transition into the earth. A direct reference to this binary between the feminine and the masculine in Western society, erases how the feminine is submissive to the divine.
Queen from the 7th earth, 2024
The piece titled “Queen from the 7th earth” concretises in a delicate and feminine measure that permeated the collection. A silhouette figure with a flowing wing like garment, with hands in supplication or prayer. She was also depicted like a dark silhouette. The works are captured with flowing feminine impact. This emphasized femininity, playing with a dark hue of blue in this piece expresses and counters the traditional light and grandiose contexts that masculine depictions of the divine are depicted in the Western context.
