ruby onyinyechi amanze

About the work

After working for eight years with an ongoing series, I recently edited my recurring elements down to seven items:

1.            Ada

2.            Avdre

3.            Windows/architecture

4.            Birds

5.            Bikes

6.            Swimming pools and

7.            Paper

Two sub series came fom this: one – a dance between any of the seven; and two – isolating or pairing elements as a portrait of sorts. This drawing is part of the latter.

About the artist:

Born 1982 Port-Harcourt, ruby onyinyechi amanze lives and works in Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Graduated from BFA Fine Art with Summa Cum Laude at Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2004); and from MFA Fine Art at Cranbrook Academy of Art (2006).

amanze’s large-scaled and multi-dimensional drawings are part of an ongoing, yet non-linear narrative that employ the malleability of space as the primary antagonist. A nameless, self-imagined, chimeric universe has simultaneously been positioned between nowhere and everywhere.

Taking roots in architecture, design, migration histories and non-nationalist politics, the manipulation of space functions as a poetic alternative to fixed identities and geographies. Navigating fictional and conflating worlds, a cohort of aliens, hybrids and ghosts play effortlessly and access magic as their mundane, yet expansive norm.

Selected solo exhibitions include there are even moonbeams we can unfold, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2018); STAR FISH, Smack Mellon Foundation, New York (2017); The Divers, The Armory Show with Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, New York (2016); astroturf rooftop picnics, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York (2015); a story. in parts., Tiwani Contemporary, London (2015); merge, Nomad Gallery, Washington D.C. (2014); and Waiting for the Queen, Dyker Gallery, Brooklyn Academy of Music (2012). Selected group exhibitions include you are so loved and lovely, Fridman Gallery, New York (2019); A Slice through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawing, Drawing Room, London and Modern Art Oxford (2018); Affective Affinities, 33rd Bienal de São Paulo (2018); The Ease of Fiction, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2017); Un-becoming, Fridman Gallery, New York (2016); The Other Hemisphere, Artists, Women, Africans, Natural History Museum of Le Havre (2016); Magic, Omenka Gallery, Victoria Island (2015); BRIC Biennial, Volume I, Bric Arts Gallery, Brooklyn (2014);and no one belongs here more than you, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (2013).

Awards include selection as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (2012-2013); a recipient of the Artist Commission Program, Montblanc Cultural Foundation, Hamburg (2018); and shortlisted for Prix Canson Drawing Prize, The Drawing Centre, New York (2016). Residencies include Queens Museum, Flushings (2015 – 2017); and Open Sessions, The Drawing Center, New York (2016 – 2017).