Exploring the borderlands between fashion, performance and visual art, Athi-Patra Ruga makes work that exposes and subverts the body in relation to structure, ideology and politics. His works are bursting with eclectic references and a carnal sensuality, cut with humour. His performances, videos, costumes and photographic works pose a utopian alternative to the rigid dogma of divisive ideologies, ushering a world into existence where cultural identity is no longer determined by geographical origins, ancestry or biological disposition, but is increasingly fluid.

Selected exhibitions include Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design (2015–19: Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; CCCB Barcelona; Kunsthal Rotterdam and Blanton Museum of Art, Austin); Art/Afrique, Le nouvel atelier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017); AFRICA: Architecture, Culture and Identity, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2015) and The Film Will Always Be You: South African Artists On Screen, Tate Modern, London (2015).