The woman posed languidly in a kaleidoscope of lush colour is “Miss Azania”, a fictional beauty contest competitor for a fictional African nation, a utopia known as “Azania”. Using the tropes of beauty contests in which women’s bodies are exoticised, objectified and politicised to assert nationalism, artist Athi-Patra Ruga responds to Desmond Tutu’s vision of post-apartheid South Africa, as a “Rainbow Nation”—one that in reality forgot and rejected many marginalised people. His Rainbow Nation is both literal, exploding with colour, and a reclamation of space for queerness. Ruga’s work will be coming to London in October, as a solo exhibition organised by Somerset House and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.
