Ruth Buchanan (Te Ati Awa, Taranaki) was born in New Plymouth in 1980 and grew up in Wellington. She gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland in 2002 and a Masters of Art (Fine Art) from the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2007.

Buchanan has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and Europe. Her practice includes video, performance, text, sculpture and sound to investigate how artistic legacies can have agency in the present day. Buchanan’s works have reclaimed and reanimated the history and influence of figures such as New Zealand painter Flora Scales and writer Janet Frame.

Normal Desires was exhibited in the exhibition ‘Knowing Nothing of Agility’ at TENT, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, in 2007. The photograph also featured on the cover of Normal Desires, a collection of related texts edited and published by Buchanan.

Buchanan lives and works in Berlin and Wellington.