Whitechapel Gallery

In the right hands, art can be a devastating weapon. And South African-born artist Gavin Jantjes uses it with brutal force. He left South Africa with a degree in graphic design and fine art in 1970, and made it to Germany where he was granted political asylum. There, he combined his righteous anger at the state of his native country with an eye for design to create a series of ultra-confrontational political screenprints. They’re collaged aesthetic manifestos, calls to action, visual poems that still resonate today. They’re on display in a room upstairs in his show at the Whitechapel Gallery, and they’re incredible. A 1977 triptych combines newspaper clippings, press photos and images of barbed wire to expose the violence of the Soweto Uprisings, the 1974 series ‘A South African Colouring Book’ attacks the dehumanising language and symbolism of apartheid with fusions of text and African art, all sourced from Western archives. These screenprints are a searing indictment of exoticism, division, apartheid, injustice, and most of all, of racism. The fact that they’re posters, that they’re so direct and loud with their messaging, is what makes them so successful. A celestial approach to exploring Black spirituality But Jantjes wasn’t limited to screenprinting, and the rest of the show is made up of paintings on canvas. In earlier works, he continues to explore outwardly political themes – violent suppression of student uprisings, colonial division – but now rendered in post-surrea