‘Ghetto Soldiers’ in Black and White

From the doorway, ‘Ghetto Soldiers’ looks a little dreary. There’s not a pop of colour to be seen and what is visible seems intricate and alarming, what with it being rendered in the frank and unforgiving tones of black and white.

A step closer makes it all much livelier. Lok Kandjengo’s roosters and vintage cars, Salinde Willem’s traditional women and beaten drums and Petrus Amuthenu’s abstract imaginings that whirl and twirl in on themselves speaking of land, the joy of simple living and dazzling dream dames.

They call themselves Ghetto Soldiers.

It’s the name of their exhibition currently on display at the College of the Arts’ main campus and it also refers to the fact that despite various pressures and humble beginnings, they will fight for art. To create it, to make a living from it and to pursue it in the face of harsh economic challenges while supporting each other’s work and creativity.

Though Kandjengo and Amuthenu are just two of the original Ghetto Soldiers exhibiting this year, 2015 marks the collective’s fifth year of collaboration which has seen them exhibit at the National Art Gallery, Studio 77 and the Katutura Community Arts Centre.

This year, the group makes its return on Fidel Castro Street with a tribute to John Muafangejo – in terms of linocut and woodcut technique and colour scheme – and with a woman in their midst.

Introducing young educator Salinde Willem, ‘Ghetto Soldiers’ is instantly imbued with a feminine touch that centres around the Himba and Zemba women in the Kunene region where Willem grew up.

“I like to create art about my culture, my hobbies and things I love like music,” says Willem. “I grew up in Kunene region and so I want to represent the culture. I love cardboard print because not many women do it so it’s unique.”

For Kandjengo, inspiration comes from remembrance. Recalling watching his father work as a mechanic as well as roosters in the north, Kandjengo’s work is self-referential and nostalgic while speaking unabashedly of his love for vintage cars sometimes parked next to huts or astride corrugated iron dwellings.

“I’m mostly inspired by where I live, what I own and what my father owns,” says Kandjengo. “It was interesting working in black white mainly because it’s faster than colour and you can make many more prints.”

Also eager to work within the Muafangejo technique is the third Ghetto Soldier, Petrus Amuthenu.

“Black and white is wonderful and easy,” says Amuthenu. “It’s only difficult if you don’t have any ideas and can’t balance your colours. You can’t have too much black or too much white.”

Presenting a ‘Dream Element’ series that reproduces the same African goddess in three mediums as well as odes to the mother, lines depicting the land issue and such sweet scenes as a two youths pouring over seedlings in a village hut, Amuthenu is far and away the most prolific, present and inventive of the Soldiers.

A champion of the abstract in a technique commonly used to represent the traditional, Amuthenu breathes new life and inspiration into the method made famous by Muafangejo while executing highly original pieces in unwaveringly neat lines buoyed by bright concepts.

Mature, meticulous and certainly a mentor to Kandjengo and Willem whose work is competent but largely trite, Amuthenu excels whether printing, sketching or etching in colour or in black white.

Feast your eyes on ‘Ghetto Soldiers’ to see what Muafangejo’s method looks like in the present day and take a moment to marvel at the intricacy of pencil and pen as well as lino and cardboard creation which exhibition opening speaker Celia Mendelsohn calls ‘a magical way of making pictures’.

‘Ghetto Soldiers’ will be on display at the College of the Arts main campus on Fidel Castro Street daily between 08h00 and 17h00 until 13 August. All artworks are for sale.

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