Strauss & co - 26 - 28 July 2020, Online

108 283 Athi-Patra Ruga SOUTH AFRICAN 1984– The Sacred Versatile Queen and Autocrat of all Azania wool and thread on tapestry canvas 405 by 140 cm R700 000 – 1 000 000 PROVENANCE Whatiftheworld Gallery. Private Collection. EXHIBITED VOLTA10, Basel, Switzerland, 16 to 22 June, 2014. Athi-Patra Ruga’s embroidered tapestries have been an important part of his highly regarded practice ever since he pivoted from fashion to art in the mid-2000s. His earliest textile pieces appropriated images from both contemporary media and art history, notably reworking Irma Stern’s Watussi Queen (1943) in a 2008 work. In the early 2010s, these hand- made textiles became an important vehicle for the artist to elaborate his queer-positive and baroque cosmology of the Versatile Kingdom of Azania, a fictionalised South Africa ruled by a non-dynastic line of female monarchs. The reign of this semi-absolute matriarchy commenced with the rule of Versatile Queen Ivy, whose glamorous appearance Ruga fleshed out in a half-dozen embroidered pieces made in 2013–14. He also staged a sumptuous drag performance at the 2013 Venice Biennale, moving from outside the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari to the Grand Canal. In the manner of Stern, whose work he admired while studying at the Belgravia Art Centre in East London, Ruga’s