Ruga's rich tapestries

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/19/athi-patra-ruga-tapestry-south-africa

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In eras past tapestries were considered of higher standing and more precious than painting or sculpture. And according to a recent New York Times article, they're are making a comeback.

This century they hang in the Pompidou Centre and the Gagosian gallery, and notably in the first ever triennial of Fiber Arts in China, held this past September.

Cape Town based artist Athi-Patra Ruga has been working with this "neo craft" since 2008; his elaborate, adventurous tapestries capturing story lines from his performance practice. As he said during a recent studio visit, the tapestries "insert my performance into the 2D landscape".

Ruga achieves this so successfully that the majority of his tapestry canvases in The Future White Women of Azania Saga, his latest solo show that opened recently Cape Town, have already been sold. His technicolour medleys are masterfully embroidered tales that sublimate past trauma and build a new vision of what could be.

The show's opening night will be remembered as a high note, as Cape Town's art and publishing worlds convened at Ruga's gallery, Whatiftheworld. But it is out of his sabre-toothed Zebras and balloon characters on Xhosa war fields that a strangely identifiable narrative emerges, one that asks the viewer to hang around and see Azania.

<em>Athi-Patra Ruga was recently included in the Phaidon book Younger Than Jesus, a directory of over 500 of the world's best artists under 33. The Future White Women of Azania is on view in Cape Town at Whatiftheworld Gallery until 8 February 2014</em>

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