/ru:t/

As an exhibition, /ru:t/ aims to rebuild a network of scattered individuals who’s origins lie in separate geographic roots. The artists form a peninsula of community through shared otherness, connecting through difference of homeland and culture. The experiences of the artists are reflected in a larger body of people who transit through London, plugging into expanding diasporic networks. The works shown in this exhibition reflect the artists’ lived experiences, affect, politics of diaspora & their homelands, human condition, experience of assimilation to host country culture, emotional responses to migration, sanctions and racialised experiences. The exhibition holds up a mirror to find yourself in others, and explores the influences from a multitude of cultural value systems that have been carried into our current urban spaces through generational histories. 

The show brings together a group of artists who all left their home countries or places of familiarity to pursue an MA in painting at the RCA. Their paths lead them to each other and they ended up finding a creative community of similarly displaced people in a new and challenging environment. 

Matvei Matveev creates works that explore a processes of bondage and fetishism. His imagery speaks of his migratory background, masking, and social transgression, which he relates to the current politics in his country of birth, Russia, and the many places he has since called home. Relying on the context of the work and the cultures underpinning it, he playfully argues through an improvisational style of image making and sculpting. As a multidisciplinary artist, Matvei engages with experimental practices and materials to create work ranging from Painting to 3D objects. He has exhibited in London at Gallery 46, Coningsby Gallery and with the Royal College of Art. 

Joseph Mobolaji Aina is a Nigerian artist, born and raised in England.  Joseph’s work investigates human nature and the way in which it is woven into the fabric of society, with a specific interest in contemporary notions of identity and its place within popular culture. He identifies symbols within the streets and media as methods of communication between the social and the individual. By creating an alphabet from these symbols, he constructs visual poems that romantically illustrate the ills of society. Recently, he has focused closely on analyzing the presentation of black culture within the western world. His recent mask paintings pick up on many of the ideas raised by Frantz Fanon surrounding the loss of ‘Blackness’ and identity crisis. Whilst studying a BA in Law & Psychology, Aina created an artist management company, ‘JMArt Space’, and received the entrepreneur of the year award. He is now based in London having recently graduated from Painting at the Royal College of Art. 

Ji Won Cha is a painter from South Korea. She is interested in the binary interface between the human and natural, the digital and biological. Her work seeks to combine emotional attributes of nurture, care, and fear with an abstract language representative of natural harmony. Her practice involves connecting stories and experiences of everyday life seeking affiliation and closeness to one’s surroundings. The artist looks at how the landscape and the social environment interact with one another, how it shapes our sense of belonging, stories and tales, and behavior. Ji Won’s works encompass and embed with intensity, which cannot be easily explained, processed, or measured, through mark-making, symbols, colour, and abstract language. Her work is currently in the collection of the Fine Arts division in the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the RISD Special Collection in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Tristan Gittens (aka TSFG) is a North American artist living in the United Kingdom. Originally from a family of painters and art liaisons, his life’s focus has been the intersection between art and science. Tristan’s practice examines factors that lead to a decline in and unraveling of the social fabric of humanity through exploring concepts of empathy and self. Like the theory of everything in physics, his practice looks for a common set of factors that unify all humans. It is his belief that as we expand the radius of what we define as self we increase empathy. An increase in empathy leads to an increase in care which will lead to the solution for the current human condition. Selected exhibitions include: SOHO Revue Group Show 2022 and Kunsthaus-Rozig Group Show 2022. He is currently attending Royal College of Art, but also holds multiple degrees in medical studies from UC Berkeley and Stanford university. 

Anastazie Anderson is a Czech British artist born and raised in Prague. Anastazie’s practice explores the themes of nostalgia, memory, and childhood through the painting of family photographs. She is interested in the interaction between technology and the personal, especially how photography and other technologies shape the visual aesthetic of our memories and have the ability to structure some of the most personal aspects of our lives. Although her paintings are often depicted without a direct narrative or allusions to her upbringing, the coloration and compositions have a direct relationship with her childhood in the Czech Republic. Anastazie identifies her work as part of the Post-Pop art movement and has exhibited her work both in the UK and the Czech Republic, most recently as part of the WIP show at SOHO revue. She graduated from the Fine Art programme at Falmouth School of Art in 2018 and is currently on the Painting MA at the Royal College of Art.

Fang Freya Wang is a Chinese artist based in London. She was born in Beijing in an academic family, with her father a painter. Not only rooted within the context of the Eastern culture and philosophy she was born and raised in, she also approaches her pathway from the position of human being from the universal value in the wider dimension beyond the distinction between Eastern and Western culture. Her art practice is focused on delivering a naturalist worldview based on universal energy. She relies on her subconsciousness and intuition, engaging herself in the vibration of this huge universal energy field, letting her own energy flow out. Her work is mainly based on the materiality and symbolism of abstract art and mixed medium. She graduated from Central Academy of Fine Art (Beiing) with a BFA degree, and now is attending and is now working in London attending the Royal College of Art for the MA course.