Ruth Ige Explores Blue, Time, and Diaspora at São Paulo Biennial

Nigerian artist Ruth Ige discusses her series 'For Time Is the Witness of Humanity,' presented at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo and its itinerancy in Curitiba. Ige uses blue as a central motif, describing it as an ancestral practice and a diasporic mother tongue that conveys multiple emotions—life, water, sky, renewal, hope, but also sadness and grief. In Yoruba culture, indigo represents love and is used as medicine, seen in textiles like Adire and Ukara. Her works incorporate materials rooted in her heritage: Nigerian dried leaves (Uziza, Ugu, Ewuro/Onugbu), baobab leaf powder (a long-lived African tree symbolizing the tree of life), blue spirulina (a natural blue grown in water, with a tradition of harvesting by women in Chad), and Brazilian clay to honor Yoruba-Brazilian ancestral connections. Time is a key concept: past, present, and future coexist in her paintings, often using speculative fiction to address serious themes. The title reflects her view of time as a personified entity that witnesses humanity. Poetry is fundamental to her practice; she writes a poem for each series, including the eponymous poem for this body of work, whose first stanza she shares. The works are courtesy of the artist and Stevenson Gallery.