Athi-Patra Ruga

Athi-Patra Ruga (born in 1984) is a South African artist who uses performance, photography, video, textiles, and printmaking to explore notions of utopia and dystopia, material and memory.

In 2014 he presented in collaboration with Zanele Muholi and Nandipha Mntambo, facilitated by Hans Ulrich Obrist at Design Indaba Conference at Cape Town.

Ruga's performance pieces often raising questions about the public spaces being engaged with, exploring diverse levels of perceptions and reactions of the population encountered.

[12] Taking inspirations from Gustave Eiffel's 'Statue of Liberty' or Eugene Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People', Ruga brings about the idea of objectifying the woman's body as the conflict, but in his own work creates them as powerful but passive.

Ruga is confronting public memory, national identity, and history in post-apartheid South Africa, while combining traditions like a funeral march and  hybrid and festive Kaapse Klopse minstrel parade in Cape Town.

[14] This series of photographs are centered around Johannesburg Central Police Station, called John Vorster Square during apartheid, associated with interrogations, torture, and killing of political prisoners before 1994.

[15] The extravagant garments and dramatic and glamorous poses evoke traditional fashion photography, contrasting with the racist crimes once committed in the building.

[16] Among other motivations to produce this work, the artist mentioned the xenophobic attacks that took place in May 2008 (called 5/11 in the vernacular) in townships all over South Africa as well as in the inner city of Johannesburg.

[2] Ilulwane was a synchronized-swimming performance inspired by Alvin Baltrop's 1970s and '80s photographs, reflecting on the passage of time in both New York and in the artist's own Xhosa culture.