The Art and Life of John Muafangejo

In the foyer of Windhoek’s Namibian Arts Association (NAA), two linocut prints seem to bookend the relative start and culmination of Namibian artist John Muafangejo’s celebrated career.

In the first, Muafangejo depicts himself, alone with his guitar as he laments his loneliness and lack of shelter and asks the Lord to intervene in 1972. The second image, printed in the year of his death, illustrates Muafangejo’s profound change of fortune.

In 1987, Muafangejo has a house and a studio in Katutura and has exhibited his signature black and white lino prints all over the world. He is surrounded by friends, admirers and perhaps fellow artists as he shakes the hand of a religious leader, signifying Muafangejo’s enduring Christian faith.

Some of the life lived between these images adorns the NAA’s gallery walls and will do so until 5 June. The exhibition is titled ‘The Art and Life of John Muafangejo’ and begins with Muafangejo’s father, whose kraal is remembered in the people, livestock, buildings and vegetation that gave his paternal homestead its character.Within Muafangejo’s tight, black and white yet vivid imagining, the artist writes his autobiography in the third person. “He died 1955 while John was 12 years,” writes Muafangejo of his father. Such exposition, incorporated right into the artwork, is one of Muafangejo’s signatures. The effect is that, almost 40 years after Muafangejo’s death, one can read various backstories and gain insight into his oeuvre in the artist’s own words.

Working one’s way through the NAA’s galleries, which display some of the Arts Association Heritage Trust’s large collection of Muafangejo’s artworks, the artist’s life and art are illuminated, alongside the realities of the apartheid era through which he lived.

In a print depicting the funeral of Muafangejo’s mother in 1979, the artist expresses remorse at not being able to attend her burial. Muafangejo’s caption, carved eternally into the artwork tells us why.

“I was sorry also that John could not get to go to Angola to attend his mother’s funeral service. The war stops me to go to one I love,” writes Muafangejo of the South African Border War that prevents him from paying his respects.

While plenty of the featured collection portrays and celebrates Muafangejo’s Kwanyama culture in frames depicting weddings, girls stamping corn and a man making sour milk, the artist also produced prints illustrating resistance to colonial forces both in Namibia and South Africa, where, as a young man, he studied at Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre in then Natal.

In a series of three artworks featuring Mandume ya Ndemufayo, Muafangejo honours the historical figure as a hero who trained indigenous fighters resisting South African rule but who was ultimately killed in action before purportedly being decapitated. Muafangejo renders this act rather starkly.

In a volume sprouting numerous pink page markers in the NAA’s reception area, celebrated Namibian artist Ndasuunje ‘PAPA’ Shikongeni reflects on Muafangejo’s legacy. The catalogue is titled ‘John Ndevasia Muafangejo – Etchings, Woodcuts and Linocuts from the Collection of the Arts Association Heritage Trust’.

“Muafangejo became an inspiration to me through his traditional cultural message of Wambo people and their heritage in his linocuts. His works express the living and cultural value of his people and himself,” writes Shikongeni in 2010.

“Muafangejo to me was a revolutionary and spiritual artist fighting against the apartheid regime. What was stuck in his memory created a great need in him to give a shape to his experiences, and the only way that he could convey his thoughts and feelings was through using his hands on lino,” says Shikongeni.

“Many Namibians and young talented artists have a poor understanding of the art of Muafangejo, due to their lack of education compared to their counterparts in Europe,” he says.

“Although himself from a humble background, the great hero Tate Muafangejo paved the way for many young Namibian artists after independence, inspiring them to have an affinity towards printmaking medium today.”

For those familiar with Muafangejo’s work, the artist’s animated, sometimes humorous representations of indigenous culture, Bible stories, everyday life, his studies and travels, his personal history, supposed failures and triumphs as well as the injustices of the era in which he lived shine bright.

For the younger generation, who may be seeing Muafangejo’s award-winning work in person for the first time, there is much to be discovered. Yet as one peruses his many artworks, the various familiar histories, cultures and scenes, the feeling that one is left with is simple.

Muafangejo is ours.

And the NAA’s exhibition feels like coming home.

We are home in Muafangejo’s linocut prints. We are home in his remarkable iconography and we are home in his house in Katutura, where Muafangejo died suddenly of a heart attack in November of 1987, aged a tender 44.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com

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