Search Results

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

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. Abstract 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

Paul Emmanuel TRANSITIONS (2010) Skylight Gallery, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA Exhibition view of Transitions , National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2010 Transitions , National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA 12 May – 22 August 2010 ‘Transitions’ documents shifting male identity. This was the 7th showing of this touring solo museum exhibition comprising an installation of 5 original drawings, courtesy of the Spier Contemporary Collection and the short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’ (2008). ‘Transitions’ premiered at The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg South Africa in 2008. Art Source South Africa are managers of Emmanuel’s ‘Transitions’ project. Artists statement In late 2004 I was exploring how the military influenced and perpetuated notions of masculinity in South Africa. One morning, while thinking about moments of change, I decided to photograph an actual military recruit head shaving while it was happening – to witness to an unfolding drama. After some research, I discovered that there were only two remaining military bases in South Africa which still perform this obligatory ‘rite of passage’ on their premises, one in Oudtshoorn and the other, Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley. I phoned the Kimberley base, spoke to the Officer-in-Command and arranged a visit to photograph head shavings from the January 2005 intake. I remember feeling apprehensive of what I would find. I did not do military service. I only had references to military experiences told to me by my older brother and friends, who described their head shaving experiences of the apartheid military regime of the 1980s – their stories of feeling dehumanised, lots of shouting, indifference, bigotry and fear. Instead, I found a very different setting ... quiet lawns with well tended flower beds full of roses. Lines of recruits waiting patiently. No shouting. No authoritarianism. No evidence of the violent breaking down of the human spirit. Compared with the horror stories related to South Africa’s past, the equanimity of the scene was arresting. I was spellbound. These liminal moments of transition, when a young man either voluntarily – or is forced to – let go of one identity and take on a new identity as State Property with an assigned Force Number, prompted me to ask many questions: What was I actually witnessing? What is a “Rite of Passage” and how have similar “rituals” helped to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history? Why was I so powerfully drawn to and transfixed by these dramatic spectacles of subtle change and moments of suspended possibility and impossibility? And so began an intensely reflexive outward and inward journey, in and beyond my studio, which was to last four long years ... Related Content News story Voice of America TV News, 2010 Publication ‘Transitions’, Art Source South Africa, 2008 Publication ‘Paul Emmanuel: Transitions’, Smithsonian National Museum for African Art, 2010 Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 Documentary ‘How the Transitions Drawings Were Made’, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, Apartheid Museum, 2008

Paul Emmanuel TRANSITIONS (2009) Albany Museum, National Arts Festival, Makhanda, Eastern Cape, South Africa Transitions 4, (detail), 2008. Original drawing hand-incised into exposed, colour photographic paper, 48 x 48 cm. Spier Collection. Courtesy of Art Source South Africa Transitions , Rhodes University Alumni Gallery, Albany History Museum, National Arts Festival, Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown), Eastern Cape, South Africa 2 – 11 June 2009 ‘Transitions’ documents shifting male identity. This was the 5th showing of this touring solo museum exhibition comprising an installation of 5 original drawings, courtesy of the Spier Contemporary Collection and the short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’ (2008). ‘Transitions’ premiered at The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg South Africa in 2008 and debuted internationally at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA in 2010. Art Source South Africa are managers of Emmanuel's ‘Transitions’ project. Artists statement In late 2004 I was exploring how the military influenced and perpetuated notions of masculinity in South Africa. One morning, while thinking about moments of change, I decided to photograph an actual military recruit head shaving while it was happening – to witness to an unfolding drama. After some research, I discovered that there were only two remaining military bases in South Africa which still perform this obligatory ‘rite of passage’ on their premises, one in Oudtshoorn and the other, Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley. I phoned the Kimberley base, spoke to the Officer-in-Command and arranged a visit to photograph head shavings from the January 2005 intake. I remember feeling apprehensive of what I would find. I did not do military service. I only had references to military experiences told to me by my older brother and friends, who described their head shaving experiences of the apartheid military regime of the 1980s – their stories of feeling dehumanised, lots of shouting, indifference, bigotry and fear. Instead, I found a very different setting ... quiet lawns with well tended flower beds full of roses. Lines of recruits waiting patiently. No shouting. No authoritarianism. No evidence of the violent breaking down of the human spirit. Compared with the horror stories related to South Africa’s past, the equanimity of the scene was arresting. I was spellbound. These liminal moments of transition, when a young man either voluntarily – or is forced to – let go of one identity and take on a new identity as State Property with an assigned Force Number, prompted me to ask many questions: What was I actually witnessing? What is a “Rite of Passage” and how have similar “rituals” helped to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history? Why was I so powerfully drawn to and transfixed by these dramatic spectacles of subtle change and moments of suspended possibility and impossibility? And so began an intensely reflexive outward and inward journey, in and beyond my studio, which was to last four long years ... Related Content Publication ‘Transitions’, Art Source South Africa, 2008 Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 Documentary ‘How the Transitions Drawings Were Made’, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, Apartheid Museum, 2008 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, 2010

Paul Emmanuel TRANSITIONS (2009) KZNSA Gallery, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Transitions 5 (detail), 2008. Original drawing hand-incised into exposed, colour photographic paper, 78 x 305 cm. Spier Collection. Courtesy of Art Source South Africa Transitions , KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts (KZNSA Gallery), Durban, KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa 2 – 21 June 2009 ‘Transitions’ documents shifting male identity. This was the 4th showing of this touring solo museum exhibition comprising an installation of 5 original drawings, courtesy of the Spier Contemporary Collection and the short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’ (2008). ‘Transitions’ premiered at The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg South Africa in 2008 and debuted internationally at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA in 2010. Art Source South Africa are managers of Emmanuel's ‘Transitions’ project. Artists statement In late 2004 I was exploring how the military influenced and perpetuated notions of masculinity in South Africa. One morning, while thinking about moments of change, I decided to photograph an actual military recruit head shaving while it was happening – to witness to an unfolding drama. After some research, I discovered that there were only two remaining military bases in South Africa which still perform this obligatory ‘rite of passage’ on their premises, one in Oudtshoorn and the other, Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley. I phoned the Kimberley base, spoke to the Officer-in-Command and arranged a visit to photograph head shavings from the January 2005 intake. I remember feeling apprehensive of what I would find. I did not do military service. I only had references to military experiences told to me by my older brother and friends, who described their head shaving experiences of the apartheid military regime of the 1980s – their stories of feeling dehumanised, lots of shouting, indifference, bigotry and fear. Instead, I found a very different setting ... quiet lawns with well tended flower beds full of roses. Lines of recruits waiting patiently. No shouting. No authoritarianism. No evidence of the violent breaking down of the human spirit. Compared with the horror stories related to South Africa’s past, the equanimity of the scene was arresting. I was spellbound. These liminal moments of transition, when a young man either voluntarily – or is forced to – let go of one identity and take on a new identity as State Property with an assigned Force Number, prompted me to ask many questions: What was I actually witnessing? What is a “Rite of Passage” and how have similar “rituals” helped to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history? Why was I so powerfully drawn to and transfixed by these dramatic spectacles of subtle change and moments of suspended possibility and impossibility? And so began an intensely reflexive outward and inward journey, in and beyond my studio, which was to last four long years ... Related Content Publication ‘Transitions’, Art Source South Africa, 2008 Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 Documentary ‘How the Transitions Drawings Were Made’, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, Apartheid Museum, 2008 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, 2010