Procesion Begins - 17hr00 - Drill Hall , Twist Street , Johannesburg
Ends - 19hr00 - Standard Bank Gallery - cnr Simmonds and Frederich Str , Johannesburg .
For Immediate Release - 01/2012
Athi-Patra Ruga's performance,The Future White Women Of Azania, marks the culmination of a body of work that has been in development for a number of years. Initially created in 2010 for the “For Those Who Live in It - Pop culture Politics and Strong Voices” exhibition, hosted by the MU Art Foundation in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, the performance has since travelled to Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Grahamstown and Cape Town.
Ends - 19hr00 - Standard Bank Gallery - cnr Simmonds and Frederich Str , Johannesburg .
For Immediate Release - 01/2012
Athi-Patra Ruga's performance,The Future White Women Of Azania, marks the culmination of a body of work that has been in development for a number of years. Initially created in 2010 for the “For Those Who Live in It - Pop culture Politics and Strong Voices” exhibition, hosted by the MU Art Foundation in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, the performance has since travelled to Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Grahamstown and Cape Town.
Much like a painter will use her
studies to develop the final art work, Ruga has used the various performances
as a performance-in-continuum to build the population of The Future White Women Of Azania. The original character, The Future White Woman Of Azania,
performed for the first time, at the 2012 National Arts Festival, under this
name, saw the artist create a procession through Grahamstown that was to be
followed with a 19th century camera obscura, operated by collaborator,
Mikhael Subotzky. The performance
created for the 2012 GIPCA Live Art Festival, The Future White Women of
Azania : the manifesto, the balloon character was cloned and The Future
White Woman of Azania became The Future White Women of Azania
for a storefront performance within an installation.
The Future White Women of Azania
- the
procession – the performance to be staged for MAKING WAY: Contemporary
Art from South Africa and China - will
be the artist's most ambitious venture with the performance in terms of style
and scale. The 4-hour performance begins with the ritualistic blowing of
balloons and the dressing of the all 5 performers that make up the population
of The White Women Of Azania thus far, the performance will culminate in a 60 minute procession from the Drill Hall on Plein St (site of the Rivonia
Treason Trial) to the Standard Bank Art Gallery on Anderson St in the
Johannesburg CBD. This is a continuation of the artist’s exploration alternative
rituals as a means of intervention, something that is a huge influence also in
each of the artist's performances. In creating these rituals, the artist
performs a kind of Jacobinistic purge of the staid and unimaginative in all
aspects of existence. This has been first evinced in the neon
"manifesto", “Purge Your Elders”, that formed part of the
performance installation of The Future White Women of Azania : the manifesto,
performed for the GIPCA Live Art festival.
These performances are first and
foremost an intervention. It is a way in which conflict is established through
a miasma of stimuli. Here movement and non-movement, exoticism and mundanity,
noise and silence, come together to challenge the rigid compartments within
which we place them. It is also a confrontation of the politics of context, in
that the art work is taken out of the sterile controlled gallery environment,
and is exhibited in the most public way imaginable – right on the streets of
the bustling city.
Map : https://maps.google.co.za/maps?q=standard+bank+gallery+johannesburg&ie=UTF-8&ei=uMcGUea2IdC20QWRiYCIBQ&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAA
Map : https://maps.google.co.za/maps?q=standard+bank+gallery+johannesburg&ie=UTF-8&ei=uMcGUea2IdC20QWRiYCIBQ&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAA
.jpg)
