Strauss & co - 26 - 28 July 2020, Online

109 tapestry evokes the rich material culture and courtly grandeur of his imagined royal subject. The reclining pose and white dress of Queen Ivy quotes numerous portrayals of privileged white leisure and female repose, from Giovanni Bellini and Titian to Goya with The Clothed Maja (c.1805). Ruga’s identity as a gay man from South Africa adds to the richness of his work. His glamorous regent has a precedent in Pieter-Dirk Uys’s drag character Evita Bezuidenhout, the South African ambassador to the imaginary Republic of Bapetikosweti. Well known for his devilish wit, Ruga has likened his Azania cosmology to that of Walter Battiss, in particular Fook Island, which melded the feyness of primitivism with a robust critique of late-apartheid artistic censorship. Ruga’s work also directly intersects with the tradition and pageantry of African-American performance and LGBT culture, both of which have gained increasing visibility and acceptance, notably through RuPaul’s Drag Race, a hugely popular reality series.