{"product_id":"athi-patra-ruga-looking-for-the-one","title":"Athi-Patra Ruga: ... Looking for the One","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis generously illustrated book is published in conjunction with the exhibition \u003ci\u003eAthi-Patra Ruga: ...looking for the One\u003c\/i\u003e at Iceberg Projects, Chicago. In the exhibition, acclaimed South African artist Ruga uses the archive of 20th-century photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten as a starting point to continue his decade-long interest in unpacking Black modernists' response to European and American negrophilia of the early 20th century. Through a series of oil pastel portraits, hand-embroidered tapestry, and stained glass, Ruga probes the continued influence of historical tropes on performativity, agency, and representations and of the queer, male, Black body.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy creating a series of speculative portraits and studies of Van Vechten's anonymous muse, Ruga seeks to reimagine an alternative history for one nameless model exotically\/erotically depicted in Van Vechten's photographs. In this process, Ruga embodies a type of double consciousness by becoming both the artist and the muse.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis publication includes a foreword by curators Dr. Daniel Berger and John Neff reflecting on the artist's practice, and a conversation between Ruga and Neff about the exhibition.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRuga is one of the few artists working in South Africa today whose work has adopted the trope of myth as a contemporary response to the post-apartheid era. Ruga creates alternative identities and uses these avatars as a way to parody and critique the existing political and social status quo. His artistic approach of creating myths and alternate realities is in some way an attempt to view the traumas of the last 200 years of colonial history from a place of detachment—at a farsighted distance where wounds can be contemplated outside of personalized grief and subjective defensiveness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe philosophical allure and allegorical value of utopia has been central to Ruga's practice. His construction of a mythical metaverse populated by characters which he has created and depicted in his work have allowed Ruga to create an interesting space of self reflexivity in which political, cultural, and social systems can be critiqued and parodied. Ruga has used his utopia as a lens to process the fraught history of a colonial past, to critique the present, and to propose a possible humanist vision for the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Itasca Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":54526392762643,"sku":"9798218606756","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0948\/3521\/2563\/files\/9798218606756ita.jpg?v=1785852564","url":"https:\/\/danuc.net\/products\/athi-patra-ruga-looking-for-the-one","provider":"Danu's Wardrobe","version":"1.0","type":"link"}