athi-patra ruga
Ruga (born Umtata, 1984) is a South African artist who uses performance, photography, video, textiles, and printmaking. He creates new myths and characters to investigate the impact of colonialism and other traumas in South Africa after apartheid. He sets his work in an imaginary place where everything is perfect, the land of Azania (the name given by activitists to their country before the end of apartheid). Ruga’s Azania is a safe space for black, queer and femme people, a “utopia” which contrasts sharply contrast with contemporary South Africa where such dreams have yet to be fulfilled.
