(Athi-Patra Ruga. Pic by Adam McConnachie)
The National Arts
Festival’s 2015 Standard Bank Young Artist for Performance Art, 30- year-old
Athi-Patra Ruga, explores and pushes boundaries between fashion, performance
and contemporary art by creating works that reveal the body in relation to
structure, ideology and politics.
Born in 1984 in the
Transkei, growing up between Umtata and being schooled in East London, Ruga was
influenced by the global metropolitan mix of people who had moved to the area
at the time. Growing up in a creatively-aware family, his mother worked in
radio dramas and his father a presenter on Radio Transkei, Ruga’s influence on
performance was prevalent. He recalls being taken to the station and creating
the sound effects on radio dramas as a little boy.
“My father used to
take me to the studios and I’d be the guy that made the sounds. They used to
send me to make the walking on gravel sound, or the shutting of the door, and I
think at that point I realised one could use tools to create an alternative
reality, which was great for my life as well, because I created alternative
personas to be able to fit in, to be able to validate my difference from the
populace,” says Ruga.
The sense of
globalism in his hometown was the platform Ruga used in his art form to reach
across people of all colours and levels of social classes and breakdown their
stereotypical views on race, sexuality and gender identity. Through his work,
Ruga created characters that could combat these challenges. “I think because I
would be seen as being a victim of people’s non acceptance of my identity - being
a gay man, being a black man, being a gay non-Christian- I felt that I had this
need to remedy this resistance and so I created characters that are a cure to
these challenges because they are always changing and their objectives are in
flux.”
In 1999 he went to
the Belgravia Art College in East London for art classes, which was where he
first used his body as a tool to communicate in art. Following his creative
process, the notion of costume through history and the body of a woman in art
history became his means of communicating his views on integration and
acceptance. Upon completing his high school education, Ruga moved to
Johannesburg and was awarded a scholarship to study fashion design at the
Gordon Flack Davidson Academy of Design.
“Fashion with its
performativity could actually join in with the history of art, and the history
of fashion and just how clothes make one behave within society, how one changes
their behaviour when they wear a certain thing or how they show their behaviour
sometimes, and this became such a beautiful union,” says Ruga as he sheds light
on integrating his passion for fashion design with art.
His large scale
works are a combination of performance through processions and interventions,
he finds the procession is a way in which one can communicate with the audience
on an extended level. The Future White
Woman of Azania- an ongoing series of performances engaging new definitions
of nationhood in relation to the autonomous body- is predominant in these
processions. Other themes in Ruga’s works are the disillusioned utopia, racial
ideologies and the body as a communicative tool. His tapestries represent a
counter proposal to ideas of nationhood and belonging, he elaborates on the
artistic process when creating both processions and tapestries “The first step
I take is to cultivate my visual language, the influence in what I am making
and a means of creation is also collaboration and building a sense of creative
community. What’s been important to me has been showing my work and not sitting
on it because this always puts an onus on me to always step up the quality of
my work, the craftsmanship and criticality.”
Ruga was featured
in the Phaidon book Younger Than Jesus,
a directory of over 500 of the world’s best artists under the age of 33 and his
works form part of private, public and museum collections nationally and
internationally. In July this year he was commissioned by French fashion label
Louis Vuitton to create a large-scale tapestry in their flagship store on the
Champs-Élysées in Paris. Among these moments Ruga’s most
memorable is being invited to Performa, being part of Imaginary Fact at the
55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
Ruga reflects on
one of his career’s highlights at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown
where he worked with photographer Mikhael Subotzky on a performance in the
township and reminisces that it was memorable because “of the nature of
collaboration itself and the walk I took through this small township outside
Grahamstown which was cathartic because I was able to confront my history of
walking the township as someone who doesn’t fit in. I, of course, walked it as
the The Future White Women of Azania because my characters are more robust than
I am.”
At the moment he is
working on his critically acclaimed The
FWWOA Saga and will be taking part in the 1.54 Contemporary African Art
Fair in London concurrently with the presentation of his latest Exile Series of tapestries at the Foire Internationale
d'Art Contemporain (FIAC) in Paris. Apart from entering a production for his
2015 National Arts Festival debut, Ruga is working on his ninth and tenth solo
show to open in Paris and Cape Town respectively. As a mentor he is working on
the Adult Contemporary projects which is a series of exhibitions that bring to
the fore the country’s young unsigned art talent.
“It means I am
joining a pantheon of South African icons that I have always looked up to,
people who subsequently would go on to be part of the south African visual arts
landscape” says Ruga on winning the award.
The other
recipients of the 2015 Standard Bank Young Artist Award are Luyanda Sidiya (Dance),
Kemang WaLehulere (Visual Art), Musa Ngqungwana (Music), Nduduzo Makhathini
(Jazz), and Christiaan Olwagen (Theatre).
This year’s National
Arts Festival will take place in Grahamstown from July 2 to 12. For more
information click on the banner advert at the top of this page to link to the
website.
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