Inatu Indongo-shades of gray: images from her first solo exhibition, National Art Gallery of Namibia, April 2005.

"I called the exhibition 'shades of gray' ... taking it from two angles. In terms of colour I only used grays. It's very difficult to paint in gray, you need to get the texture to get it interesting. So I gave myself this challenge: what if I only used two colors, black and white, and created my own shades of gray? The second aspect was looking at shades of gray in life in general. I was at a point in my life where I was realising that things are never just black and white. I looked at myself, at my negative aspects, those things that I'm not comfortable with myself--and I also looked at good aspects of myself--and I realised it's not really white or black. At the same time I realised what was important, the values important to me. These are things that I don't want to be gray about.

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But I also understood the importance of flexibility. It helps because when you are set in one way, you cause yourself a lot of pain because you want life to go according to your ideas, but it doesn't work like that, and that is where this whole exhibition came from."

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