ruby onyinyechi amanze is a visual artist whose practice is primarily centered around drawing and works on paper. In a non-linear and fluid narrative, her large scaled drawings explore space, play, magic and hybridity.
Most recently, amanze completed two-year long residencies at the Queens Museum and as part of the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions Program, both in New York. She has exhibited her work internationally in Lagos, London, Johannesburg and Paris, and nationally at the California African American Museum, the Drawing Center and the Studio Museum of Harlem.
amanze earned her B.F.A., Summa Cum Laude, from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 2012-2013, amanze was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Today she resides between Philadelphia and Brooklyn, but calls multiple places home.
Artist Statement
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.
Curriculum Vitae
Contact
rubyamanze@gmail.com
*NOTE: Artist’s name is intentionally written in all lowercase font. Please do not use standard capitalization.