Athi-Patra Ruga

WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2017

A true force in the contemporary South African art ecology, Athi-Patra Ruga quickly distinguished himself amongst his contemporaries for his vibrant works filled with layers of intersecting meaning. Through elaborate costumes, intricate beadwork, and surreal landscapes, Ruga creates visually captivating and intellectually stimulating works that confront viewers with questions of cultural authenticity, heritage, and the complexities of post-apartheid African identity. His groundbreaking contributions have earned him international acclaim, with exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Hayward Gallery, Tate Modern and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, as well as participating in the 55^th Venice Biennale.

Ruga’s practice is fundamentally concerned with the construction of myth. His works are thus best construed as windows into the imagined worlds inhabited by the concepts conjured within the mind of the artist. In these dreamscapes, Ruga projects his ambitions, fears and whims to the audience, often shrouded within a panoply of cascading visual and intellectual references. The present lot, Azania in Waiting, takes its title from a fictional land conceived by the Pan African Congress in 1965 as a utopic vision of post-Apartheid South Africa. In a mythic act of nation building, Ruga submits an idyllic and colourful vision for this utopia.