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STEVENSON is pleased to present the work of Moshekwa Langa and John Muafangejo in the third iteration of Juxtapositions, the gallery’s series of idiosyncratic two-person exhibitions.

The phrase ‘I was lonelyness’, seen first in John Muafangejo’s print Zimbabwe House (1975) and used as the title of his catalogue raisonné of graphic works, was adapted to ‘I was once lonelyness’ by Moshekwa Langa. Inscribed on the bottom of his 2011 drawing, After Muafangejo, the text acts as a direct reference that announces the Namibian printmaker’s influence on Langa, while spotlighting how both artists navigate the themes of isolation, belonging and placemaking across their respective practices.

Muafangejo, often misidentified as South African, was born in Etunda lo Nghadi, Angola, in 1943 and moved to Namibia as a teenager. In 1968–69, he received tutelage at Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, returning five years later to become artist-in-residence. Despite living much of his life in Namibia, he occupies a distinct place in the South African visual  history; his images provided the backdrop for the Nelson Mandela concerts at Wembley Stadium in the late 1980s, later winning a string of local prizes.

Both Moshekwa Langa (born 1975) and Muafangejo featured in Impressions from South Africa: 1965 to Now, the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark exhibition in 2011. At the time, critic Leora Maltz-Leca contrasted these artists while underscoring their shared itinerancy, observing that Langa ‘challenges the prevailing boundaries of printmaking but also unravels the very conceit of the nation under which these artists are gathered’. 

Juxtapositions continues to articulate the connections between these two artists, with paintings, drawings and collage created by Langa between 2000 and 2011 presented alongside linocuts by Muafangejo dating back to 1969. Though prints by the latter are pointedly monochromatic while the former makes elliptical use of colour – incorporating maps, adhesives and domestic materials to achieve unconventional surfaces – shared preoccupations emerge across both artists’ strategies around composition, text, portraiture and line.