bio
Ruth Owens is a figurative painter and video artist from the southern United States. She is represented by the Ferrara Showman Gallery, and belongs to the artist collective, “The Front,” both in New Orleans. Her work explores the entanglement of culture and the natural environment from a Black feminist lens.
Owens participated in the international Prospect.6 triennial in 2024/25.
Photo by Jonathan Treviesa
Artist residencies include the Joan Mitchell Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in NY. Her work is in the permanent collections of the21cMuseums, Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Addison Gallery ofAmerican Art, the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society, Beth Rudin DeWoody,Fidelity Investments Corporate Collection, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
artist statement
I am a muddy river, and the sun bright moss, and a fat-bellied spider. I am this wild, wild world, but we are not aligned. I am comfortable and drunk on extracted fruit and I am lost.
I long for a bygone relationship of mutual respect with nature in all its treacherous beauty. As a figurative painter and video artist who dreams of reconciliation between our anthropocentric tendencies and the natural world, I create optimistic imaginaries, all the while acknowledging the disconnect evident in our present ecological relationships. This dream is visual when folks dance fluidly and pelicans glide over waves. It is felt when I bring forth a worldview that is at one with the natural world; the west African Bakongo cosmogram’s circularity establishes the connectivity of all life, and underpins the
structure and philosophical approach to much of my work.