Athi-Patra Ruga: ... Looking for the One

This generously illustrated book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Athi-Patra Ruga: ...looking for the One 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.By 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.This pu