S&C

cape listings

The Future White Women of Azania

Athi Patra Ruga
The Future White Women of Azania, 2013. Photographic print .

'The Future White Women of Azania'

Athi Patra Ruga at Whatiftheworld / Gallery

‘You should think of myth as a process, as a verb ‘to myth’, then you understand the function of it much better. [That is myth’s] underlying function is to help us think about what human existence is like. But instead of closing meaning off, they push you and point you in different directions.’ 

Prof Mary Beard

Athi-Patra Ruga is one of a handful of artists, working in South Africa today, who has adopted the tropes of myth as a contemporary response to the post-apartheid era. Ruga has always worked with creating alternative identities that sublimate marginalized experience into something strangely identifiable. Amongst many notable creations to date has been the ambivalently gendered Beiruth, whose name, with its middle-eastern associations, evoked ideas related to Edward Said’s 'Orientalism' and the Illuwane, again an ambivalent sexual entity rooted in Xhosa Mythoglgy.

But Ruga is now bringing a new set of mythical characters a little closer to home. In 'The Future White Women of Azania' he is turning his attention to an idea intimately linked to the apartheid era’s fiction of Azania – a Southern African decolonialised arcadia. It is a myth that perhaps seems almost less attainable now than when the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) appropriated the name in 1965 as the signifier of an ideal future South Africa – then at least was a time to dream more optimistically largely because the idea seemed so infinitely remote.

But Ruga, in his imaginings of Azania, has stuck closer to the original myth, situating it in Eastern Africa as the Roman, Pliny the Elder, did in the first written record of the name. Here Ruga in his map The Lands of Azania (2014-2094) has created lands suggestive of sin, of decadence and current politics. Countries named Palestine, Sodom, Kuntistan, Zwartheid and Nunubia are lands that reference pre-colonial, colonial and biblical regions with all their negative and politically disquieting associations. However, in what seems like something of a response to the ‘politically’ embroidered maps of the Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti, Ruga infers that the politicization of words are in a sense prior to the constructed ideology of the nation state.

What is more Azania is a region of tropical chromatic colours, which is populated with characters whose identities are in a state of transformation. At the centre of the panoply of these figures stands The Future White Woman whose racial metamorphosis, amongst a cocoon of multi-coloured balloons, suggests something disturbing, something that questions the processes of a problematic cultural assimilation. And it is here that the veracity of the myth of a future arcadia is being disputed if not entirely rejected.

To be sure, unlike Barthes’s suggestion in his essay ‘Myth Today’, Ruga is not creating myth in an act that depoliticizes, simplifying form in order to perpetuate the idea of an erroneous future ‘good society’. Instead, placing himself in amongst the characters in a lavish self-portrait Ruga imagines himself into the space of the clown or jester (much like the Rococo painter Watteau did in his painting ‘Giles’), into the space of interpreter as well as a cultural product of the forces outside of his own control. 

Ruga’s Azania is a world of confusing transformations whose references are Rococo and its more modern derivative Pop. But whatever future this myth is foreshadowing, with its wealth, its tropical backdrop, its complicated and confusing identities, it is not a place of peaceful harmony - or at least not one that is easily recognizable. As Ruga adumbrated at a recent studio visit, his generation’s artistic approach of creating myths or alternative realities is in some ways an attempt to situate the traumas of the last 200 years in a place of detachment. That is to say at a farsighted distance where their wounds can be contemplated outside of the usual personalized grief and subjective defensiveness. 

27 November - 08 February



more cape listings

  • 'Myths of Harare'

    'Myths of Harare'

    Wycliffe Mundopa

    at Commune.1

    Commune.1 is pleased to present an exhibition of large-scale oil paintings by Zimbabwean painter Wycliffe Mundopa. Combining personal iconography and allegorical imagery with harsh and gritty references to social reality, Mundopa’s paintin

    SEE MORE
  • ‘In the end, we're all to blame’

    ‘In the end, we're all to blame’

    Elize Vossgatter

    at Commune.1

    Commune.1 presents ‘In the end, we're all to blame’, an exhibition of new paintings by Elize Vossgatter and a collaboration with Berlin-based performance artist Hilla Steinert. Following an ongoing interrogation of the notions of the self

    SEE MORE
  • 'Suspension of Disbelief'

    'Suspension of Disbelief'

    Various Artists

    at Brundyn

    'I am an avid reader and follower of science fiction - and at times speculative fiction - narratives about forays into and encounters with the future - other worlds, other times and places, parallel universes, episodes of time travellers in far and d

    SEE MORE
  • 'Night Watch'

    'Night Watch'

    Gabrielle Raaff

    at Salon 91

    Working with the ephemeral qualities of watercolour and ink, Raaff explores certain spatial conditions of figurative and architectural form within the urban realm. Her latest works see a return to oil and a more intuitive, visceral exploration of the

    SEE MORE
  • 'Michaelis Galleries: Masters Graduate Shows'

    'Michaelis Galleries: Masters Graduate Shows'

    Alice Gauntlett, Ashley Walters, Madeline Groenewald and Christine Cronjé

    at Michaelis Galleries

    Michaelis Galleries showcases the work of garduating masters students; Alice Gauntlett, Ashley Walters, Christine Kronje and Madeline Groenewald.

    SEE MORE
  • 'Forming Impressions: The Ghost in the Machine'

    An exhibition of original prints from the Artist Proof Studio and Warren Editions Featuring: Doris Bloom, Jan-Henri Booyens, Katherine Bull, Paul Edmunds, Georgina Gratrix, William Kentridge, Mongezi Ncaphayi, Christian Nerf, Nkosana Nhlapo, Lucas

    SEE MORE
  • 'The Refusal of Time'

    'The Refusal of Time'

    William Kentridge

    at Iziko South African National Gallery

    The Iziko South African National Gallery in association with the Goodman Gallery will host 'The Refusal of Time' (made in collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh, Dada Masilo and Peter Galison), a 5-channel video installation with a movi

    SEE MORE
  • GRID Cape Town Photo Biennial

    GRID Cape Town Photo Biennial

    Various Participants

    at Various venues around Cape Town

    GRID is an international photography biennial which is to be organized in several important upcoming creative cities in the world. GRID brings together formal country exhibitions and statements from the creative industry. Anticipating on a changing s

    SEE MORE
  • 'An Eclectic Mix'

    'An Eclectic Mix'

    Various Artists

    at Eclectica Modern Gallery

    Various artists are showcased creating an interesting mix of modern art . Amos Letsoalo, Bettie Cilliers-Barnard, Peter Pharoah, Simon Jones, Lolly Hahn-Page, Simon Addy, Jana Prinsloo and more.

    SEE MORE
  • Solo Exhibition

    Solo Exhibition

    Kurt Pio

    at Smith

    SMITH opens its doors with a solo show by KURT PIO. Pio’s ardent love affair with Cape Town is explored, expressed and communicated through his paintings and artistry. This particular body of work looks at materialising Cape Town as a globally recog

    SEE MORE
  • 'Undo All'

    'Undo All'

    John Murray

    at Whatiftheworld / Gallery

    WHATIFTHEWORLD is pleased to present 'Undo All', a new exhibition of painting by John Murray.John Murray is a South African painter living and working in Cape Town South Africa. Working in oil on canvas he creates abstract compositions rendered in a

    SEE MORE
  • 'Somewhere'

    'Somewhere'

    Lou Ros

    at The Christopher Moller Art Gallery

    The Christopher Moller Art Gallery is proud to present 'Somewhere', an exhibition of paintings by the young emerging Parisian painter, Lou Ros. This will be his first visit to the African continent and we are delighted to host his show in Cape Town,

    SEE MORE
  • 'Cross My Heart'

    'Cross My Heart'

    Hannalie Taute

    at Erdmann Contemporary

    Taute’s work is in a constant state of evolution, which in itself mirrors many of the ideas behind her art. One central theme or unifying characteristic is the repeated exploration of identity.She explores this concept by means in which people

    SEE MORE
  • 'The Fallen and the Drowned'

    'The Fallen and the Drowned'

    Pierre Fouche

    at Whatiftheworld / Gallery

    WHATIFTHEWORLD is pleased to present 'The Fallen and the Drowned' a new solo exhibition by Pierre Fouché.'The Fallen and the Drowned' is an exhibition of intimately scaled laces, embroideries, drawings and video in which Fouché revels in the traditio

    SEE MORE
  • 'C-Stunners and Black Mamba'

    'C-Stunners and Black Mamba'

    Cyrus Kabiru

    at SMAC ART GALLERY CAPE TOWN

    Cyrus Kabiru is a self-taught emerging Kenyan artist, best known for his elaborate and detailed sculptural spectacles or “C-Stunners”, made from found objects and recycled material sourced on the streets of Nairobi. A confident and ind

    SEE MORE
  • 'Rembrandt in South Africa: Pioneer Printmaker of Humanity and Modernity'

    'Rembrandt in South Africa: Pioneer Printmaker of Humanity and Modernity'

    Rembrandt van Rijn

    at Iziko Michaelis Collection at the Old Town House

    For almost two centuries after his death, the reputation of one of the world’s most revered artists of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was not rated very highly at all. His ‘rediscovery’ had to wait until the mi

    SEE MORE
  • 'Time and Again'

    'Time and Again'

    Penny Siopis

    at Iziko South African National Gallery

    Iziko Museums of South Africa are delighted to announce the first retrospective exhibition by Penny Siopis titled ‘Time and Again’, which is scheduled to open its doors to the public on the 18th of December 2014. One of the most anti

    SEE MORE
  • 'Thinking, Feeling, Head, Heart'

    'Thinking, Feeling, Head, Heart'

    Group Show

    at The New Church

    In November 2012 The New Church Museum, South Africa’s first contemporary art museum, opened its doors to the public with an exhibition from its permanent collection, ‘Subject as Matter’ curated by Penny Siopis. Two years on, the museum is delighted

    SEE MORE

art events calendar

VIEW FULL CALENDAR

buy art prints

Portfolios Portfolio Two

edition of 60: R40,000.00

About Editions for ArtThrob

Outstanding prints by top South African artists. Your chance to purchase SA art at affordable prices.

FIND OUT MORE Editions for artthrob