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Paul Emmanuel, contemporary artist. Creator of ‘Rising-falling’, ‘Substance of shadows’ and ‘The Lost Men’. Untethered/Retethered (تائه في العدم/مستعيد جذوره ) (detail) 2025, featured in Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art , Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, 23 January – 23 August 2026. See more→ Untethered (detail) 2024, featured in MICA Grad Show III , Maryland Institute College of Art, 27 September – 13 October 2024. See more→ Parade of shadows featured in If You Look Hard Enough You Can See Our Future, Newcomb Art Museum, 10 March – 20 June 2025. See more→ Substance of Shadows, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery. 11 September – 2 October 2021. See more→ The Lost Men Mozambique featured in Cartographies of Becoming, The Sylt Foundation, 24 December 2021 – 30 December 2022. See more→ Rising-falling, General Louis Botha Monument, 15 June 2021. See more→ Paul Emmanuel, published by Wits Art Museum, 2020. See more→ Men and Monuments, Wits Art Museum, 3 – 18 March 2020 and 6 – 30 April 2021. See more→ Impermanence, Fried Contemporary Gallery, 8 March – 7 April 2018. See more→ The Lost Men France, Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, 1 July – 1 October 2014. See more→

Paul Emmanuel TRANSITIONS MULTIPLES (2011) Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, USA Transitions Multiples , Goya Contemporary, Goya Girl Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA 8 September – 5 November 2011 ‘Transitions Multiples’ formed part of Emmanuel’s ‘Transitions’ project in which he explores the way society constructs perceptions and performances of a masculine identity. The exhibition comprised a suite of hand printed, hand coloured 'manière-noire' stone lithographs as well as the short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’ (2008). Art Source South Africa are managers of Emmanuel's ‘Transitions’ project. Related Content Publication ‘Paull Emmanuel: Transitions Multiples’, Goya Contemporary, 2011 Documentary ‘How the Transitions Multiples Lithographs were Made’, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, FNB Joburg Art Fair, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, Maryland Institute College of Art, 2011 Film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008

‘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

Installation view of 3SAI: A Rite of Passage , 2008. High-Definition, single-channel video, stereo soundtrack, 13 min 58 sec Black Box , Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, USA, 9 November 2011 – 2 January 2012 On view November 9, 2010 through January 2, 2011 as part of our year-long Black Box series of single-channel video screenings. 3SAI: A Rite of Passage (2008) meditates on masculine identity in post-Apartheid South Africa. The work focuses on a mixed-race group of military recruits whose heads are being shaved – part of a process that turns individual young men into a collective of soldiers. Emmanuel emphasises this process of transformation through editing that moves with increasing speed from one close-up to another, each man blurring into the next. He intersperses footage of the head-shaving ritual with luscious tracking shots of an expansive, golden landscape in which rows of white shirts flutter like flags or peace offerings. Emmanuel’s work was recommended to the Smart Museum by Jane Taylor, a South African curator and scholar, and Visiting Professor in the Department of English Languages and Literature Related content Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, 27 September – 31 December 2008 ←Previous Next→

Installation view of Untethered (2024) in the main court at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, USA. 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) MICA Grad Show 3 , Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 27 September – 13 October 2024 The thesis exhibition of final year, graduate students enrolled in the Mount Royal School of Art (Multidisciplinary MFA) program, curated by Professor Luca Buvoli. Including works by Sanah Brown-Bowers, Meg Clerc, Paul Emmanuel, Trisha Gupta, Yuanwei Huang, Teddi Kabler, William Okaily, Grusha Sabharwal, Erhan Us and Jeehee Yoo. Untethered (2024) was featured in this exhibition. Artist statement At present, the United States finances, trains and arms soldiers in the Lebanese Armed Forces. My mixed European/Lebanese heritage has compelled me to spend the last two years interviewing retired and active-duty Lebanese and U.S. soldiers deployed to the ‘Middle East’ region. In these conversations, I was struck by each soldier’s account of the camaraderie between ‘battle buddies’ and surprised that the older veterans spoke of a profound sense of loss when returning to civilian life. This traumatic experience of detachment resonated strongly with me when a U.S. paratrooper gave me his parachute. He recounted how he had acquired it after retiring from active duty in 2008, only to discover that all 30 of its suspension lines had been severed. The accompanying two original drawings comprise a ‘foot portrait’ of a U.S. paratrooper and a ‘hand portrait’ of a Lebanese active-duty infantryman. Both men cannot be identified for various reasons, but I was driven to record the intimacy of our conversations in some way. They both allowed me to photograph and draw their feet and hands, so as to protect their anonymity. Each image is scratched by hand with a steel blade into a dark background, on a piece of cotton rag. The U.S. paratrooper’s feet are scratched into a layer of black boot polish because to this day, airborne troops still buff their black leather, ceremonial ‘jump boots’ using these materials to signify excellence and professionalism. The Lebanese infantryman’s hands however, are scratched into a layer of gunpowder residue from an M16 assault rifle and ammunition supplied by the United States. Acknowledgements Luis Rosa Valentin, Dan Kasza, Carlos Muños, Katinka Hooyer, Hannah Challita, Suzanne Challita, Carine Challita, Anthony Emmanuel and Peter Emmanuel. To my parents Related content Civic engagement project ‘The Veteran’s Memorial to the Living’ (ongoing) Civic engagement project ‘Talking With Monuments: Veteran Dialogues on Remembering’, 2024 – 2026 Interview Mount Holyoke College, 2024 Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men France’, 1 July – 1 October 2014 ←Previous Next→

Banner from The Lost Men Grahamstown , 2004. Pigment-printed photograph on voile. 104 x 177 cm. Courtesy of Grahamstown National Arts Festival and Art Source South Africa Battleground , Standard Bank Gallery, Albany History Museum, National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa, 2 – 12 July 2015 Curator Michael Godby’s exhibition is a response to the challenge of showing Charles Bell’s 60 drawings of the War of the Axe in Grahamstown, the very territory that was fought over during the Wars of Dispossession, and to viewers, most of whom would have been constructed as the ‘enemy’ in Bell’s account of the war. The challenge is met in two ways. First, the drawings themselves are contextualised in a series of installations. Bell had been in Grahamstown before the war broke out adjudicating land claims relating to the 1820 settlers: display of contemporary surveying equipment and relevant maps will underline the point that first and foremost, this war was about the colonial acquisition of land. Similarly, Bell’s image of the Xhosa represents a significant change from earlier idealised views and is derived in large measure from contemporary racial theories that can be illustrated from books of the time. Such prejudices are also apparent in many of the newspaper reports of the war which will be reproduced as text panels in the exhibition. And installations of muskets and swords from the period will make the suggestion that Bell’s drawings were every bit as much an offensive weapon as the actual instruments of war. The second part of the exhibition comprises recent representations of the War of the Axe and related Wars of Dispossession. These include new versions of historical events, by both black and white artists, that give a very different account of the wars. Other works isolate the pictorial language of colonial artists, notably steel engraving and perspective, to show how these elements are implicated in the colonial project. Other works again challenge the construction of masculinity inherent in Bell’s, and others’ accounts of the wars. And several works lament the tragic waste of life that occurred in these wars. A voile panel from The Lost Men Grahamstown (2004) was selected for this exhibition. Related content Counter-memorial ‘The Lost Men Grahamstown’, 1 – 10 July 2004 ←Previous Next→

Installation view of 3SAI: A Rite of Passage , 2008. High-Definition, single-channel video, stereo soundtrack, 13 min 58 sec Doing Hair: Art and Hair in Africa , Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa, 20 August – 2 November 2014 This exhibition celebrates the creativity, individuality and innovation in hairstyling and art, in South Africa, and in other parts of the African continent. The exhibition is sponsored by Black Like Me, South Africa’s iconic hair care company. This partnership between WAM and Black Like Me, the company who revolutionised the South African hair care industry in the 1980s, makes possible an exciting and highly topical exhibition. The political, social, cultural and economic implications of hair and hairdressing are explored in the exhibition. It also looks at how hair communicates information about age, religious affiliation, social status, political ideologies and aspirations. Extraordinary objects that are used to protect, style and adorn hair, historical and contemporary artworks, barbershop posters, films and installations from Wits Art Museum and other public and private collections are included. Emmanuel's short film 3SAI: A Rite of Passage (2008) was selected by the curators for this exhibition. Related content Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, 27 September – 31 December 2008 ←Previous Next→

Number 05000674PV , 2009. 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 DAK'ART 2012, Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Museum Theodore Monod, Dakar, Senegal, 11 May – 10 June 2012 CURATORS: Christine EYENE, Nadira LAGGOUNE, Riason NAIDOO THEME: "CONTEMPORARY CREATION AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS" The tenth edition of the biennale is held in a particular context. Indeed, 2012 is an electoral year in Senegal as was 2000. This year also marks the twentieth birthday of the most former biennale of the African continent. DAK'ART is maintained as a key event in the international art calendar. The theme chosen for this edition is expected to examine through various angles the dialogue that contemporary artists maintain with a social environment which is in constant mutation. Contemporary creation and social dynamics, is a field of investigation which academics, art critics and artists are invited to explore in the context of the meetings and exchanges of the edition 2012 of the Biennale. number 05000674PV (2009) was selected by the curators for this exhibition. Related content Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Publication ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Publication ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 ←Previous Next→

Still from 3SAI: A Rite of Passage , 2008. High-Definition, single-channel video, stereo soundtrack, 13 min 58 sec VIDEOGUD , 10th Video Konst Festival, Uppsala Konsert and Kongress, Sweden, 27 – 28 May 2010 The VIDEOGUD programme screens selected videos in two periods in sixteen venues spread out in three counties in the middle of Sweden – in public libraries, museums, cultural centers, hospitals and schools. These programmes reach out to art and media students alike as well as new audiences. The focus of these programmes is to educate and inform. In addition, every spring in May, a two-day Video Art Festival takes place with national competitions where artists and critics give lectures to compliment the many screeenings. 3SAI: A Rite of Passage (2008) was selected to be screened on this programme and at this festival in 2010. Related content Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 Exhibition ‘Transitions’, 27 September – 31 December 2008 ←Previous Next→

Amnos , (detail), 1993. Copperplate mezzotint etching. Image 9 x 7 cm. Edition 10 Open Bite: A New Look at Intaglio Printmaking , Civic Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa 1994 A group exhibition installed in the Civic Gallery (later known as The Gallery Premises) at The Johannesburg Civic Theatre. Related content Exhibition ‘Pages from Cathexis’, 30 April – 27 May 2000 ←Previous Next→

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→

Installation view of 3SAI: A Rite of Passage , 2008. High-Definition, single-channel video, stereo soundtrack, 13 min 58 sec Not My War , Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 29 June – 25 July 2012 Not My War is an exhibition of works by significant South African artists that have reflected on their country’s involvement in border wars in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola during the 1960s to 1980s. Marking the 25th anniversary of the war’s bloodiest and most decisive battles, most notably at Cuito Cuanavale, Not My War looks at how these artists have been impacted by and responded to what is now commonly referred to as the Border War. Furthering the resurgence of dialogue around this ‘silent war’, the exhibition will endeavor to engage the complex personal and institutional discourse surrounding this conflict, as well as highlight the war’s continuing relevance and effect on South African society. Curated by David Brits, participating artists are Wayne Barker, Christo Doherty, Paul Emmanuel, John Liebenberg, Jo Ractliffe, Colin Richards, Chad Rossouw, Penny Siopis, Christopher Swift and Gavin Younge. Exhibition and catalogue text by Natasha Norman. Emmanuel's short film 3SAI: A Rite of Passage (2008) and his manière noire stone lithograph titled number 05000674PV (2009) were selected by the curator for this exhibition. Related content Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Exhibition ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Publication ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Publication ‘Transitions Multiples’, 2011 Short film ‘3SAI: A Rite of Passage’, 2008 ←Previous Next→