Athi-Patra Ruga

Born 1984 in Umtata, South Africa

Lives and works in Johannesburg

 

 

Athi-Patra Ruga is a hastily-ascending young artist whose work comfortably straddles the divides between fashion, performance and photography. Ruga's approach is one of willful confrontation, underpinned nonetheless by a finely-honed aesthetic sensibility. Dressed in a dizzying array of costumes, Ruga inserts himself, or rather the characters he is playing, into challenging situations. The Artist's interest in fashion stems from a complex understanding of the body and the politics its dressing reveals. He speaks about body proportions and gender-based preconceptions informing clothing, which in turn render the body rather than simply covering it. His shift into performance has seen him importing this concept of clothing into energised situations, informed by a razor-sharp sense of time and place.



Athi-Patra Ruga, ...the naivety of Beiruth 1, Light-jet print on fuji crystal archive paper, 40 x 60 cm, Edition 5+2AP, 2008.