RUTH VIKTORIA WARD is a mixed media artist, printmaker, and photographer, born in Germany in 1932. Much of her diverse artwork reflects multicultural experiences of living, working and teaching for many years in Europe, Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, and of spending her summers on an old farm in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. There she makes outdoor installations with found objects related to her environment, fragments from nature and restoration/construction material.      

Since the early 1990s, Ward has been involved in several major visual/verbal collaboration projects with Moroccan writer and sociologist Fatema Mernissi. Feminism and the literary and artistic exploration of a woman's status and identity was their early connection and springboard that led to the exhibitions: The Harem Within--Fear of the Difference (published in 1994 as a book, Dreams of Trespass including photographs from the exhibition), the Vanishing Orient-- Papa’s Harem is shifting to Mama’s Civil Society (catalogue published in Germany, 1997); and The New Scheherazade, both of which have been shown extensively in Europe and the U.S. The collaboration with Fatema Mernissi has inspired the artist to investigate her own autobiographical material: “Memory Curtain,” Creative Partners Gallery,  2000; “Friendship Curtain,” Kuenstlerbahnhof Westend Berlin, Germany, 2001; “Two Worlds—One Woman’s Story,” an artist’s book, part of a Women’s Caucus for Art exhibition documenting women’s lives, 2003. Since 1994, Ruth V. Ward has been a member of Creative Partners Gallery, now Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda, Maryland. 

Ruth V. Ward received an M.A. in German Literature from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. in 1964 before embarking on a career in the visual arts, studying at the Corcoran School of Art; the Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart, Germany; and the Pratt Graphics Center, New York. Ward’s work has been exhibited both internationally and nationally.

For more information on Ruth Viktoria Ward, visit her website from which this information was obtained: Ruth Viktoria Ward