Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze[a] (born 1982), is a Nigerian-born British-American artist noted for drawings and works on paper which focus on cultural hybridity or "post-colonial non-nationalism."[1][2][3] In addition to being an artist, she has also worked as a teacher and curator.[4] She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Amanze's graphite, ink and pigment drawings, often combined with photo transfers, are populated by hybrid creatures that exist in multi-geographic spaces, floating in the white space of their paper substrate. She is greatly influenced by Nigerian artists and the Nigerian history of drawing.[7] Her mixed-media drawings center on the concept of displacement and cultural hybridity.[8]
Drawing has become her primary medium, with Amanze describing it as "constantly reinventing itself".[7] Despite working with various mediums, her current pieces are all centered around drawing, a favorite medium since childhood.[9] Only in college did she depart from drawing as her primary medium, instead majoring in the art of photography and textiles.[4] Influenced by textile design, photography, print-making and architecture,[10] her work conveys cultural displacement, anxiety, and identity, inspired by her “pieced-together memories” of Nigeria.[11] These works explore a sense of displacement and existence between places, evoking feelings of homesickness and longing.[9]
From 2015 to 2016 Amanze was an Opens Sessions participant at the Drawing Center, New York.[12]
Amanze was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, NY in 2011, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council from 2014 to 2015,[11] the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, Florida in 2015, and the Queens Museum in Queens, New York, from 2016 to 2017.[13]
Selected exhibitions
Amanze has exhibited internationally. Her solo exhibitions include:
