There are many ways to approach application of speculative fiction onto a text. In the case of precolonial, colonised and apartheid South Africa, speculative fiction has filled gaps and offered hypotheses for integral narratives where imperialism deliberately erased, misdocumented or dismissed parts of the plot. Toward a resolution that heals, interdisciplinary artist Athi-Patra Ruga marked the twentieth anniversary of his practice with a show that demonstrates the urgency of applying imaginative play through speculative fiction.
Home at BKhz in Rosebank’s Keyes Art Mile, and titled Amadoda on the Verge [1835 – 2025], the exhibition considers how the gaps and omissions we find in the historical texts, that we reference today, affect the ways we understand and, in turn, explain contemporary masculinities. These gaps not only hinder our understanding of the past but also shape contemporary narratives about masculinity, often reducing them to one-dimensional stereotypes. A study of past, current and future men on the verge, spanning 190 years, the exhibition presents an opportunity to consider the material and meta ways that “mythmaking fills these gaps” for Ruga.
To make worlds out of moments, Ruga uses a number of tools that span language, spatial and temporal allusions, historical texts, oral history and a painting style that lends itself to realism as much as it does fabulation. Let us fixate on the temporal thread that runs throughout the works.
In choosing to document masculinities at this liminal point, Ruga softly suggests that his audience pays attention to the transitional spaces or states. An inbetween, the during sandwiched by before and afters, the verge is often neglected. A symbol of potential and transformation; it is a space where historical legacies can be reimagined and where new narratives can emerge. In doing so, Ruga softens the boundaries that typically define masculine identities, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a man in contemporary South Africa.