...AFTER HE LEFT  /  2008

In ‘...after he left’, Athi-Patra Ruga documents his alter ego Beiruth and its journeys to scale the façade of a charismatic church in Cape Town’s east city. It hovers and struts its way through Atlantis’ taxi rank. Both poignant and disturbing, Ruga questions the now stale and overworked notions of identity and prejudice.

The work is unsettling and engaging. Ruga sends Beiruth and its trembling legs into hostile environments. With Oriental origins, stilettos, fishnets, fashioned accessories and its arrogant, sexually provocative postures, Ruga commands viewers to hate. And all the while there lingers a beguiling plea for acceptance.

With physical bravery Beiruth stands defiant, shunning poplar conventions and stultifying hypocrisies. What saves Ruga from being lynched by churchgoers, taxi commuters and the like, is not acceptance but fear. The fear that a lampshade and helmet adorned apparition may possess powers strange and unknown – the fear of a country and of an illness.

COURTESY OF WHATIFTHEWORLD / GALLERY

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