Future White Women of Azania - The Founding Myth
55th
Venice Biennale
2/3/4 June
20:15 – 21:00 pm , Campo dei Frari
The Future White Woman of Azania is an
ongoing series of performances first conceived in 2010 and evolving to engage
new definitions of nationhood in relation to the autonomous body.
In the
enactment of the site-specific work commissioned for the 55th Venice Biennale,
the performance takes the form of an absurdist funerary procession. The
participants are the ABODADE - the sisterhood
order of Azania and the central protagonist - The Future White Woman.
“Azania, as a
geographic location, is first described in 1stCentury Greek records of navigation and trade , The
Peryplus of the Erythrean Sea and is
thought to refer to a portion of the East and Southern African coast. The word Azania
itself is thought to have been derived from an Arabic word referring
to the ‘dark-skinned inhabitants of Africa.’
Azania is then eulogised in the black consciousness movement as a pre-colonial utopian black homeland- this
Promised Land, referenced in struggle songs, political sermons and African
Nationalist speeches. In Cold War pop
culture , Marvel Comics used Azania as a
fictional backdrop to a Liberation story that bares a close resemblance to the
situation that was Apartheid in Old South Africa … so it is at once a mythical and faintly factual
place/state that this performance unfolds… Who are the Azanians for what it’s
worth ? It is in this liminal state that
the performance unfolds…“
Seeking to radically reimage the potential of Azania and its
inhabitants, the performance questions the mythical place that we mourn for and
asks who its future inhabitants may be. Using the “Nation-Finding language of pomp and procession” , Ruga
proposes a bold and iconoclastic break
with the past Utopian promise of the elders and instead presents us with a new
potential and hybridity .
Artist Bio
Born – The Republic of Transkei [1984 ]
Lives and works in both Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Exploring the border-zones between fashioni , performance and
contemporary art, Athi-Patra Ruga makes work that exposes and subverts the body
in relation to structure, ideology and politics. Bursting with eclectic
multicultural references, carnal sensuality and a dislocated undercurrent of
humor, his performances, videos, costumes and photographic images create a
world where cultural identity is no longer determined by geographical origins,
ancestry or biological disposition, but is increasingly becoming a hybrid
construct. A Utopian counter-proposal to the sad dogma of the division between
mind and body, sensuality and intelligence, pop culture, craft and fine art,
his works expresses the eroticism of knowledge and reconciles the dream with
experience.
Recent exhibitions include: The Beautyful Ones , Nolan Judin Gallery
, Berlin .Under a Tinsel Sun the main exhibition of the III Moscow
International Biennale For Young Art; Making Way, in collaboration with Mikhael
Subotzky National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa; Ilulwane, a solo
performance at PERFORMA11 (NY) ,Beauty and Pleasure in Contemporary South
African Art at the _Stenersen Museum_ in Oslo, Norway; the *Guangzhou Trienalle
in China; Ampersand at the Daimler Collection (Berlin); A Life Less Ordinary -
Performance and Display in South African Art, (UK); For Those Who Live in It -
Pop culture Politics and Strong Voices, _MU_ (Holland); *Athi-Patra Ruga - The
Works, Solo Exhibition at _FRED_ (London) and *Dak'Art - Biennale of African
Contemporary Art (Dakar).
Athi-Patra Ruga was also recently included in the Phaidon book
_'Younger Than Jesus'_, a directory of over 500 of the world’s best artists
under the age of 33. His works form part of private public and museum
collections here and abroad, namely: Museion - Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Bolzano Italy; CAAC - Pigozzi Collection; The Wedge
Collection, Iziko South African National Gallery.
