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National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC USA, 23 January – 23 August 2026. Untethered/Retethered , 2025, (تائه في العدم/مستعيد جذوره) (detail) Decommissioned, model T-10, U.S. military personnel parachute with severed suspension lines, detached harness with risers, 550 para-cord. High-definition video projection, stereo soundtrack, 7 min 26 sec. Parachute diameter: 35 feet. Harness dimensions: 30 x 30 inches (excluding suspension lines). Photographed by Mark Auslander. I'm deeply grateful and honored to be a part of this show, which has taken us on a long, winding road for preparation. Comprising nearly 60 objects created by LGBTQ+ artists from Africa and the diaspora, you may recall that Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art was originally scheduled to open in May 2025 but was postponed until now. An interesting article about the postponement was published in The Washington Post last year, while I was still in DC and you can read it here→ . Displayed in a section of the exhibition titled ‘Family’, Untethered/Retethered is a video installation depicting the verbal accounts of USA and Lebanese soldiers talking about some of the intimacies that exist between them and their ‘battle-buddies’. Sometimes humorous, other times poignant, they offer a glimpse into the military cultures of both countries and are layered over landscapes of Iraq and Afghanistan. The video is projected onto a US military paratrooper’s harness, splayed open and hovering in the suspended opening of its disconnected parachute. You can watch the 8 minute video of the installation below: The video installation is accompanied by a framed diptych of a ‘hand portrait’ of a Lebanese infantryman scratched into gunpowder residue and a ‘foot portrait’ of a US paratrooper scratched into boot polish. Luckily, the museum allowed me to install my work while I was still in DC and below are some pics from that week. It was such a pleasure to work with this extraordinary team of professionals! Thank you to the curators Kevin Dumouchelle and Serubiri Moses and the indomitable management and staff at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art for their resilience and conviction for putting up this show! If all goes well, I plan to be in DC for the launch of the fabulous Here book planned for launch later this year ... Connect to the National Museum of African Art website here → PREVIOUS NEWS POST Critical Commemorative Practices in The Lost Men France by Paul Emmanuel New academic journal article by Associate Professor Irene Bronner, University of Johannesburg published in De Arte , Taylor and Francis. 17 November 2025. Figure 1:   Paul Emmanuel. Installation view of The Lost Men France . 1 July 2014 to 1 October 2014, on privately owned land adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. Photographed by Colleen Costick, 2014. Courtesy of Paul Emmanuel. This article examines South African artist Paul Emmanuel’s The Lost Men France  (2014), part of his ongoing Lost Men  project, as a critical intervention into dominant forms of memorialisation and public art. Installed adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in Picardy, France, Emmanuel’s ephemeral installation challenges the nationalist ideologies and racialised exclusions of conventional war memorials, such as the erasure of Black South African servicemen from First World War histories. Drawing on Mechtild Widrich’s concept of performative monuments and on James E. Young’s framing of the counter-monument, The Lost Men France  is interpreted as a work of art that resists permanence, instead activating memory through vulnerability, absence, and embodied witnessing. This article argues that Emmanuel’s installation establishes a dialogical relationship with the Thiepval Memorial, both supplementing and unsettling its monumental authority. The installation foregrounds haunting and witnessing not as passive acts of remembrance, but as active, critical modes of engagement with the historical violence embedded in memorial forms. In doing so, it offers a reparative aesthetic grounded in fragility and contingency, proposing new forms of commemorative practice beyond the logic of state-sanctioned heroism. While #RhodesMustFall  frames recent calls to decolonise public monuments, Emmanuel’s long-standing performative interventions demonstrate a prescient critique, even with their ambivalences, of how patriarchal and racialised structures shape what and who is remembered. Read and download the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00043389.2025.2563405

Montserrat College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. May 16, 2025 Paul Emmanuel receives Honorary Doctorate from Montserrat College of Art The framed Honorary Doctorate given at the ceremony A video recording of the commencement speech Paul Emmanuel delivers keynote address and receives Honorary Doctorate from Montserrat College of Art. The Zambia-born artist is currently a Fulbright Scholar and preparing for an exhibition of his work at The Smithsonian in Washington, DC. A display of his work was also shown at the college. Read more

Judkis, M., The Washington Post,  Washington D.C. USA, May, 2025. Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art was originally scheduled to coincide with the worldwide Pride celebration in Washington. The museum postponed it until next year, citing a funding shortfall. Untethered/Retethered (detail) 2025, Decommissioned, model T-10, US military personnel parachute with severed suspension lines, detached harness with risers, 550 paracord, High-definition video projection, stereo soundtrack. This work is featured in Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art , National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Winter – summer 2026. Read the original article on washingtonpost.com Connect to the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art website

‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C., USA, 2026 ‘If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future’, Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 10 March – 20 June 2025 ‘MICA Grad Show 3’, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 12 – 28 April, 2024 ‘In Uncertainty We Trust’, Sheila and Richard Riggs and Leidy galleries, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 27 September – 13 October 2023 ‘Cartographies of Becoming’, The Sylt Foundation, Sylt Island, Germany. 24 December 2021 – 30 December 2022 ‘Holding Tension’, Sheila and Richard Riggs and Leidy galleries, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 2 – 10 December 2022 ‘Reviewing the Past’, Carol Schlosberg Alumni Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 18 January – 19 March 2022 ‘Cure’, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa 14 September 2020 – ‘Bag Factory 30 Years: So Far, The Future’, FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, 30 June – 4 July 2020 ‘Ampersand Foundation 21 Years Celebration Exhibition’, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa 11 September – 9 October 2019 ‘Regards: Photographie Camerounaise / Digital Africa’ – Casablanca Biennale Internationale de Casablanca Project Space, Morocco. 18 April – 15 June 2019 ‘Sway: A Photographic Exhibition’, Now Gallery, The Open Window, Irene, South Africa, 27 March – 30 June 2019 ‘Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts Opening Exhibition’, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa, 26 March – 30 June 2019 ‘Wounds and Relics’, Gallery 2, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1 – 22 September 2018 ‘Turbine Art Fair 2018’, Art Source South Africa Booth GH4, Turbine Hall, Johannesburg, South Africa, 12 – 15 July 2018 ‘Recent Acquisitions: UNISA – University of South Africa Permanent Art Collection’, UNISA Art Gallery, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, 5 – 31 August 2017 ‘Material Gains: Contemporary Art from the Spier Collection’, Stellenbosch University Museum, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 25 July – 15 November 2018 ‘The Art of Reading from William Kentridge to Wikipedia’, Meermanno Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands, 18 November 2017 – 5 March 2018 ‘I Am Because You Are: A Search for Ubuntu with Permission to Dream’, Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa. 2 February – 31 March 2018 ‘International Printmaking Alliance Exhibition’, Taimiao Art Gallery, Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing, China 25 September – 10 October 2017 ‘Rethinking Kakotopia’, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, 6 September – 4 October 2017 ‘Booknesses: Artists’ Books from the Ginsberg Collection’, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 25 March – 5 May 2017 ‘In Plain Sight: Social Life in South Africa and Romania Before and After 1989’, ApARTe Gallery of George Enescu University of Arts & Borderline Art Space, Iasi, Romania 25 November – 8 December 2016 ‘Foundations and Futures: Celebrating 25 Years of the Bag Factory’, Fordsburg Artists’ Studios, Johannesburg, South Africa, 28 October – 10 December 2016 ‘Rites of Passage: Between Light and Shadow’, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa, 11 – 18 June 2016

Table number 12 , 2010. Manière noire stone lithograph, hand printed, hand coloured, signed, numbered and dated by the artist. Black lithographic ink and watercolour pigment on 285 gsm Fabriano Rosaspina Avorio paper, 80 x 156 cm. Edition 35. Courtesy of Art Source South Africa I Am Because You Are: A Search for Ubuntu with Permission to Dream , Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa. 2 February – 31 March 2018 The Standard Bank Gallery joins hands with renowned artist and curator, Usha Seejarim to present an inspiring exhibition of art works lifted from the bank's corporate art collection. Featuring Table number 12 (2010). Including works by: H.C Andrews, Percy Ndithembile Konqobe, Alan Crump, Paul Emmanuel, Barbara Jeppe, Johannes Masego Segogela, Gerard Sekoto, Willie Bester, Robert Hodgins, Daniel Naudé, Norman Clive Catherine, William Joseph Kentridge, Walter Oltmann, Dumile Feni, Kim Lieberman, Lucky Madlo Sibiya, Andrew Tshabangu, Thami Mnyele, Samuel Daniell, Joni Brenner, Diane Victor, Lisa Brice, Kudzanai Chiurai, Hasan and Husain Essop, Haroon Gunn Salie, Gerhard Marx, Sydney Kumalo, Pierre Crocquet, Norman Kaplan, Colbert Mashile, Thomas Trevor Motswai, Sam Nhlengethwa, Penelope Siopis, Nhlanhla Xaba, Pieter Hugo, Anton Van Wouw. Related content Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, 8 September – 5 November 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Publication ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Publication ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 ←Previous Next→

The Lost Men Project (Grahamstown) , 2004. Digital program, touch screen, headphones, pedestal. Dimensions variable. Edition 3 The Art of Reading from William Kentridge to Wikipedia , Meermanno Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands, 18 November 2017 – 5 March 2018 This exhibition organised by The House of the Book (a collaboration of Museum Meermanno and the National Library of the Netherlands). The exhibition will elucidate the reading process. The six rooms each have a theme that is linked to the physical process of reading: leafing through, touching, looking, remembering, focussing and reacting. Most of our senses are involved in the process, as are many areas in the brain. Questions about the process will help the visitor formulate some answers: How does the reading brain work? What types of reading should be distinguished? How to deal with multi media books – sound, image, typography? How to experience works on paper versus digitised works? The show unites works that are multi-sensorial or pluriform (video/paper, sound/image etc). There will be no books in cases, all works can be touched by the visitors. Selected artists: Scott Blake, Amaranth Borsuk & Brad Bouse, Jan Dirk van der Burg, Marinus van Dijke, Paul Emmanuel, Eyejack, Juan Fontanive, Carina Hesper, Mirabelle Jones, William Kentridge, Kraak & Smaak, Michael Mandiberg, Simon Morris, Didier Mutel, Rick Myers, Heidi Neilson, Joyce Overheul, Sebastian Schmieg & Silvio Lorusso, Rebecca Sutherland, Elisabeth Tonnard. The Lost Men Project, Grahamstown (2006) was selected by the curators for this exhibition. Related content Exhibition ‘Navigating the Bookscape: Artists’ Books and the Digital Interface’, 25 – 30 September 2006 Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men Grahamstown’, 1 – 10 July 2004 ←Previous Next→