Athi-Patra Ruga
MODUS OPERANDI
Athi-Patra Ruga is a hastily-ascending young artist whose work comfortably straddles the divides between fashion, performance and photography. Arguably picking up where Steven Cohen seems to have left off, Ruga’s approach is one of willful confrontation, underpinned nonetheless by a finely-honed aesthetic sensibility.
Dressed in a dizzying array of costumes, most notably his ‘Injibhabha outfit’ (one Ruga himself has been known to call his ‘Afro Womble’ attire), Ruga inserts himself, or rather the characters he is playing, into challenging situations. This challenge operates in two directions: Ruga’s presence in outlandish dress-up challenges social conventions of normal appearance, and asks tough questions of the arbiters of convention. However, with Ruga there is no default to the easy challenges favoured by much fine art: he is frequently challenged in reverse, having to defend himself from the ever-present threat of ‘beat- downs’, whether it’s in the Cape Town township of Atlantis or in Bern in Switzerland.
Ruga’s interest in fashion stems from a complex understanding of the body and the politics its dressing reveals. He speaks about body proportions and gender-based preconceptions informing clothing, which in turn render the body rather than simply covering it.
His shift into performance has seen him importing this concept of clothing into energised situations, informed by a razor-sharp sense of time and place. His sojourn through Switzerland in his Injibhabha costume was calculated to draw comparisons with a controversial poster by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which depicted a black sheep being booted off the Swiss flag by three white sheep. Spotting a key opportunity to critique European xenophobia, Ruga appeared in the sanitised urban landscape of Berne in his aberrant attire for a series of performances collectively titled Even I Exist in Embo: Jaundiced tales of counterpenetration.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
On his early work:
‘Above all I believe that the work developed out a need to illustrate arguments about the body in the context of the post-industrial (even post-urban). By utilising the medium of fashion I wanted to explore disembodiment with regards to the result of one not being aware of how things are made… in the form of craft work as it is process-based - this requires discipline - and the body plays a big part in realising this discipline… A form of disembodiment befalls one’s senses when they don’t pay attention to the process of things, how things are done. One eats sushi without the full grasp of the process (of preparing it), people rob people without knowledge of how things are acquired… I feel that making, and being conscious of making is a discipline.’
On the topics of costume and performance:
‘One has to be a mirage to tackle history and put it in another context to get to the point… The costume plays that role in performance.’
On the issue of contemporary ‘hyper-masculinity’:
‘The trick I play with the “act” is to cast attention to the idea of hyper-masculinity… The blue boy is an icon of the Rococo movement as it is layered with the irreverence, a frivolity that characterizes the aesthetics of hip-hop and the spirit of the Rococo movement. I “pimped it out” by performing the act, forcing the two together. The use of the phallus is in direct reference to the groping of the balls, the auto-exotic visions of the black phallus etc. The Lamborghini Gallardo is featured in Akon’s “Smack That” promo video. The lyrics play into the whole “body architecture” (concept) and the ownership of another individual as a “ride”’.
By Michael Smith
Click here to read the complete ArtBio on Artthrob
EDUCATION
2004 Honoors Diploma in Fashion History and Design, Gordon Flack Davison Design Academy, Johannesburg, South Africa
EXHIBITIONS
2010
* From Pierneef to Gugulective, South African National Gallery, Cape Town
* Athi-Patra Ruga - The Works, Solo Exhibition FRED Gallery, London, England
* Group Project, MU Foundation, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
* DADA South, South African National Gallery, Cape Town
2009
- After He Left, Solo Exhibition, YOUNG BLACKMAN, Cape Town
- … mister floating signifier and the deadboyz - Solo Exhibition, Whatiftheworld, Cape Town
- Beauty and Pleasure in Contemporary South African Art, Stenersen Museet, Oslo, Norway
- Infecting the City, Cape Town CBD, South Africa
- Spot on Dak’Art - 2008 Retrospective, IFA Gallery, Berlin, Germany
- Pret a Partager (More than the sum of its parts), IFA Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany
2008
- Peripheral Vision and Collective Body, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy
- Big Wednesday, Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
- …of bugchasers and watusi faghags (Solo Exhibition), Art Extra, Johannesburg, South Africa
- Disguise: The art of attracting and deflecting attention, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
- Upstairs/Downstairs, Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa
- The Trickster, Art Extra, Johannesburg, South Africa
2007
- Impossible Monsters, Art Extra, Johannesburg, South Africa.
- Miss Congo, Performance in collaboration with Christopher Martin, Confluence 4.2, DesignIndaba 10
- “She is dancing in the Rain with her hand in the toaster”, Performance in collaboration with Christopher Martin, Michael Stevenson Contemporary, Cape Town, South Africa
- Inj’ibhabha Series, Jaundiced Arcadia / Tales of Counterpenetration, Progr zentrum fur kulturproduction, Bern, Switzerland.
2006
- Doc. no3, Die Naai Masjien - Miss Congo, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
2005
- Doc. no2, Die Naai Masjien- The Revenge of the 9ft Ma-Benz and her Toothless Taxi Kings, Elle New Talent Awards / South African Fashion Week.
2004
- Doc. no1, Die Naai Masjien - Familie Fortuin, Elle New Talent Awards / South African Fashion Week
RESIDENCIES
2007
- A.I.R., PROGR- Zentrum fur Kulturproduction. Bern, Switzerland.
- Kin Be Jozi. August House, Johannesburg, South Africa
2006
- Scenographies Urbaines. Lingwala ,Kinshasa , D.R.C.
