RUTH & NAOMI

12th century BCE, Moab

Ruth and Naomi's story is usually remembered as a beautiful story of loyalty between women:

“Where you go, I will go.”

Beautiful, but the story is incomplete. Garden of Even™ sees something much more sophisticated happening.

These women are figuring out how to exercise agency and power inside a system that gives them very little.

At a crossroads, Ruth chooses to go with Naomi to a foreign land rather than return to her father’s home. That isn't simply loyalty: it’s strategy. Ruth understands that she and Naomi can create something together that neither can create alone.

They combine their knowledge. Knowledge shared becomes collective wisdom.

In this Garden of Even™ portrait, chains surround Ruth and Naomi. But look closely: they aren't bound by them.

The chains represent the political, economic and social structures that constrained them. Ruth and Naomi cannot wish those structures away.

But they can figure out how they work, and how to pull them in just the right way to their advantage. Together they discover where there is room to maneuver.

Collective wisdom transforms the chains that bind into chains that adorn.

EXPLORE THE WORK

A surreal digital artwork featuring two robed figures holding a chain, with a large gold mask above them, golden wheat-like branches at the bottom, and hands with pink manicured nails holding the chain at the top corners.

Nails

Ruth and Naomi's approach, advocating for self-determination within a patriarchal framework, reminds us of the narratives of 90s female hip-hop artists and contemporary figures like City Girls and Meg Thee Stallion as their music echoes these themes. The nails pay homage to this genre.

Hands bonded together

Chains also reference the Devil Tarot card where two human figures are loosely chained around their necks. Ultimately the card shows that their bondage is an illusion and they can remove the chains at any time.

Chains

The chains aren't merely symbols of oppression in this portrayal. They become a metaphor: understand what constrains you well enough to work with it, around it, and eventually alter your relationship to it.

Reconsider

We've inherited Ruth and Naomi as a story about devotion. Garden of Even™ invites you to reconsider them as a story about power.

Not the power that comes from sitting at the centre of a system, but the power available to people on the margins who come together.

Three thousand years later, we're still navigating institutions we didn't design, rules we didn't write and circumstances we cannot completely control.

Agency does not require pretending those constraints don't exist: sometimes agency and power begins by understanding them so well that you can see possibilities from inside them.

Know the system. Choose each other. Change what's possible.

Ruth & Naomi Fine Art Limited Edition Print

$1,700.00 CAD

Shipping calculated at checkout.

For centuries, Ruth and Naomi have been celebrated for their loyalty and devotion to one another. Their story is often remembered through Ruth's famous promise: "Where you go, I will go." Yet what if their greatest lesson was not simply about loyalty, but about the power of women choosing agency, combining their knowledge, experience, and resources to reclaim power and a measure of control over their lives.

More than a work of art, this Garden of Even™ portrait of Ruth & Naomi is a daily reminder that we are not powerless within the systems we inherit. Know the system, choose each other, and change what's possible.

Artwork in collaboration with Courtney Alexander.

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Ruth and Naomi Collection

Inspired by one of history’s great stories of loyalty between women, this limited-edition framed print celebrates Ruth and Naomi’s devotion and resilience.