Ruigrok’s figures are clearly identifiable as human yet seem suspended in the ache and solace of nowhere. Heads bobbing in glazy grounds of rusted palettes, figures drifting within painterly striations of pictorial space, there is a gentle calm to her compositions that begins to crackle when we start to question the state of these protagonists. Are they alive or are they floating? Are they the victims of a tragedy? It is through the lens of mythology that one can swing the index of the image in different directions, offering a narrative that shifts within present-day pathos and bathos of mythic proportions.