May Your Road Be Light and Fun
May Your Road Be Light and Fun
About the project
May Your Road Be Light and Fun, an expansive mosaic by ruby onyinyechi amanze at Borough Hall, transforms the passageway connecting the ,,, andsubway lines into a playful exploration of space and movement.
Inspired by dance and architecture, the 1,307-square-foot artwork spans 110 feet along both sides of the passageway. The mosaic mural features several recurring characters from amanze’s work, including: a leopard-human hybrid (audre), a fluorescent alien (ada), Architecture, Pool, Bike, and Paper. For this permanent installation, Architecture is depicted as decorative elements from the historic Borough Hall Station. Paper appears as intentional shifts of white, off-white, and mirrored mosaic that comprise the corridor walls. This cohort dives, dances, and rides through the mural, inviting viewers into a richly imagined world of non-linear storytelling.
Swimming pools rendered in turquoise, deep blues, and a cardinal red version of amanze’s signature fluorescent pink appear throughout the corridor. Alongside these bold forms, small details offer moments of intimacy and contrast. Fabricated by Miotto Mosaic Art Studios, the mosaic captures the fluidity, delicate line work, and shifting scale of amanze’s large-scale works on paper.
About the artist
ruby onyinyechi amanze (b. 1982, Port Harcourt, Nigeria) is a visual artist known for large-scale, mixed-media drawings that explore themes of hybridity, identity, play, and speculative worlds. Her practice, rooted in drawing and works on paper, unfolds through non-linear, fluid narratives that blur boundaries between the real and the imagined.
amanze earned a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholars Award in Drawing to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and has participated in prestigious residencies, including G.A.S. Foundation in Lagos, the Queens Museum and the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions program in New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Lagos, London, Johannesburg, and Paris, and nationally at institutions such as the California African American Museum, the Drawing Center, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2019, she was named the Deutsche Bank Featured Artist at Frieze New York. Her drawings are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Deutsche Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the CCS Bard College Hessel Museum of Art.