Art performed in defiance of expectation | Athi-patra Ruga

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Through his art practice Ruga proposes an alternative space of existence, resisting colonial power. He is the creator of this space and represents his own image through a constructed identity- the Future White Woman of Azania- always obscured in a way that prevents the viewer from constructing a coherent idea about their identity.

Azania adheres to the norms of world-building in the sense that it is fully realised with histories, locations, governments etc. but departs from the norm as each of these conceptualised ideas are made purposefully hard to define and categorise. Having experienced South African Apartheid, he makes it impossible to see or create categorisation within the space that he created to defy colonial authority.

Performance Obscura, 2012

Performance piece [still]

Athi-patra Ruga

Image courtesy of curator Ruth Simbao via: https://www.ru.ac.za/artsofafrica/exhibitionsperformances/performanceobscura/

The nature of this performance was that it would not just be other artists and critics that would be exposed to it, but the people of his township. This meant that simply the act of walking became defiant because of the way that others perceived him, and incorporated the audience and their reactions as part of the work itself.

I came across Ruga’s work whilst reading the Third Space of Enunciation and found his use of balloons to conceal the masculine portions of his body fascinating. I resonated with his use of balloons as the object that you focus on as they are often seen as fun, innocent, childlike objects that he uses to convey much darker imagery. There is a sense of hope but also hopelessness when looking at these works.

I thought that the balloons acted as the face, as the eyes of the figure he created, especially during the performance where he walked though his hometown, the township of Grahamstown. This turns the object of observation on its head as the viewer becomes the viewed, shifting the power dynamic in Ruga's favour when every other element would suggest the opposite would be the case.

In this performance, each balloon was filled with a substance of Ruga’s choosing and during the walk could not withstand the pressure of their contents and would burst, by the end revealing the top half of his body. The use of this technique reflects the gaze of the people watching the performance and the judgment that Ruga felt from them, but also the sense of liberation from that gaze that this performance gave him.

I was inspired by the direct and defiant queerness and unapologetic nature of Ruga's performance. It was this that created for him a space that felt safe enough to be vulnerable as the balloons popped around and he was left exposed to the onlookers. I wanted to take this same sense of creating a space that makes room for defiant existence into my performances. The both bodily and otherworldly forms that Ruga creates also inspired my desire to look at camp and how the exaggerated and unnatural can be used in defiance.