For Ruth Ige, painting becomes a site of passage: between memory and prophecy, intimacy and myth, between the worldly and the otherworldly. The Evocation of Worlds gathers together a new body of work that extends Ige’s ongoing exploration of Blackness, African diaspora, speculative imagination, and ancestral presence. Across a serious of paintings, figures emerge and dissolve through fields of indigo, violet, shadow, and light – never fully fixed, never entirely knowable. They exist in states of becoming.

Materiality is central to this process. Working with indigo, baobab powder, dried leaves, spirulina, clay, and other organic pigments, Ige embeds her canvases with cultural memory and ancestral resonance. These materials carry traces of diasporic movement and lived experience, linking spiritual, ecological, and cultural histories across geographies. Her surfaces feel layered and sedimentary, as though shaped slowly through accumulation rather than singular gesture.

Curated by Anja Lückenkemper

Ruth Ige is the recipient of the 2025 The Rydal Art Prize. The Rydal Prize is one of Aotearoa’s biggest art prizes with a biennial award of $25,000. 

The exhibition is generously supported by the Seeds Trust.

Image Credit: 

Creditline: Ruth Ige, installation detail © Natt Fejfar / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo