Athi-Patra Ruga; South African 1984-; Invitation...Presentation...Induction
Provenance : WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town. Private Collection.
Exhibited : WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, Athi-Patra Ruga: The Future White Women of Azania Saga, 27 November 2013 to 1 January 2014. South African National Gallery, Cape Town, Women's Work: Crafting Stories, Subverting Narratives, 1 December 2016 to 30 April 2017.
Literature : Shakeelah Ismail (2021) ArtsHelp, Weaving a New World: Athi-Patra Ruga's Mythical Tapestries, online, https://www.artshelp.com/weaving-a-new-world-athi-patra-ruga/, accessed 19 January 2025. Mary Corrigall, Frank Smigiel, Natasha Norman, and Missla Libsekal (2014) Athi-Patra Ruga: F.W.W.O.A Saga, Cape Town, WHATIFTHEWORLD, illustrated in colour, unpaginated, online, https://issuu.com/whatiftheworldgallery/docs/athi-patra_ruga?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=www.whatiftheworld.com, accessed 19 January 2025.
Notes : Tapestries, an ancient art form, have long symbolised status, once reserved for the wealthy or used by the Medieval church to communicate with the illiterate. Today, they remain a symbol of high status, inaccessible to many due to their intricacy.1 The present lot exemplifies the compelling defiance within Athi-Patra Ruga's work. The tapestry, featuring vivid pinks, yellows, and blues, depicts an epic battle between Zulu warriors armed with traditional shields and balloon-covered aliens wielding futuristic ray guns. It combines color, texture, and character to entangle and reexamine memory, blending utopian fantasy with historical reality. Notably, the work defies the typical rectangular format, woven into an asymmetrical trapezoid, subverting the expectations surrounding the appearance of a traditional tapestry. Through this method of production, Ruga decolonises the narratives that continue to shape the lives of black, queer, and femme communities in post-apartheid South Africa.2 1Shakeelah Ismail (2021) ArtsHelp, Weaving a New World: Athi-Patra Ruga's Mythical Tapestries, online, https://www.artshelp.com/weaving-a-new-world-athi-patra-ruga/, accessed 26 January 2025. 2 Isabella Kuijers and Lloyd Pollak (2017) ArtThrob, Work, work, work: 'Women's Work' at ISANG, online, https://artthrob.co.za/2016/12/21/work-work-work-womens-work-at-isang/, accessed 26 January 2025.
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