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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

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→

Exhibition view of Return to Thiepval: Imprinting and Erasing Memories of the First World War , Alliance Française, Johannesburg Return to Thiepval: Imprinting and Erasing Memories of the First World War , Alliance Française, Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, 11 and 21 November 2014 A presentation of Paul Emmanuel's project The Lost Men France (2014), accompanied by Bill Nasson's historical contribution was held on Tuesday 11 November 2014 at 18h00 for 18h30 at The Alliance Française, Johannesburg and on the 21 November at the Alliance Française, Cape Town. Bill Nasson is a Professor in the History Department at Stellenbosch University. He specialises in the history of war and society and his works have been translated into Dutch, German, French and Italian. His new book, World War I and the People of South Africa is due for release in November this year. Related content Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men France’, 1 July – 1 October 2014 ←Previous Next→

Paul Emmanuel RISING-FALLING (2021) Louis Botha Monument, Union Buildings, Pretoria, South Africa Rising-falling, 2021, Single-channel, high-definition video, stereo soundtrack, 3 min 45 sec Rising-falling , General Louis Botha monument, Union Buildings, Pretoria, South Africa 15 June 2021 On 15 June 2021, the day before South Africa's Youth Day commemoration, Emmanuel's existing video work ‘Remember-dismember’ (2015) was projected publicly onto the pedestal of the equestrian monument to General Louis Botha at the Union Buildings, Pretoria, South Africa. The intervention was documented live by Latitudes Online and simultaneously recorded on video to create a video artwork. This video artwork premiered on his solo exhibition ‘Substance of Shadows’ installed at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery in September 2021. Supported by Diversity Art Forum and The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. Related content Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men France’, Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, France, 1 July – 1 October 2014 Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men Mozambique’, Catembe Ferry Jetty, Maputo, Mozambique, 24 April – 12 May, 2007 Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men Grahamstown’, 1820 Settler’s National Monument, Makhanda, South Africa, 1 – 10 July, 2004