In this article I engage South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga's artistic practice to flesh out the complexities that arise from the intersection of the terms Black and queer. Drawing on diverse historical, social and textual resources, I interpret Ruga's dismantling of dominant post-apartheid and postcolonial narratives vis-a-vis a close reading of some of his provocative avatars. Ruga's practices of staining, tainting and contaminating serve to expose the borders that produce conventional

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... ns of race and gender. The article employs camp discourse in its allusion to performativity, displacement and artifice in order to 1) lay bare prevailing normative structures; and 2) dismantle conventional views of identity. To avoid being blindsided by camp's flamboyance and ostentation, I propose a view that favours an intimate embroilment with dirt - a stance I argue may furnish camp acts with political intent and so help create a more sophisticated and comprehensive view on the juncture of Blackness and queerness. Relying on Ruga's method of counter penetration as a way of fleshing out a hermeneutic view of Black queer subjectivity, I show how counter penetration in Ruga's estimation is a subversive and transgressive act intent on contaminating and infecting conventional narratives of history, identity and politics. Keywords: Black queer identity, camp, Athi-Patra Ruga, performance.