Paul Emmanuel (artist)

Paul Emmanuel is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings and installations. Born in 1969 in Kabwe, Zambia, Emmanuel graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1993, with a BA Fine Art. Emmanuel currently lives and works in Johannesburg.

Paul Emmanuel is an artist and printmaker who employs various media including photography and film, to address issues of identity, particularly as a white male living in post-apartheid South Africa. The content of his oeuvre deals with a construct of gender, memory and loss. Emmanuel was professionally trained as a printmaker, specialising in lithography. Emmanuel employs his perceptual and technical skills to create photo-realistic drawings. In his drawings he employs a technique using a blade to scratch into the surface of exposed photographic paper and removes layers of the surface revealing tones in the paper in his drawing. His approach is from dark to light. Emmanuel has produced a non-narrative award winning experimental film artwork.

Transitions is the artist's project comprising an internationally touring museum exhibition of drawings and a short film (3SAI: A Rite of Passage). As well as suite of maniere noir lithographs titled "Transitions Multiples" exhibited in 2011 at Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore and as the featured exhibition on the 2011 FNB Joburg Art Fair. Transitions explores liminal moments in shifting white male identity, memory and loss.

The Transitions Project comprises the following three elements:

The Lost Men is an ongoing project comprises a series of temporary, site-specific installations, which engage with concepts of memorial and public grief. Emmanuel researches the history and relevance of the selected public site. The artwork he creates re-evaluates events related to South African history; it is his personal response from a contemporary viewpoint to a particular place and its historical significance. Each artwork is unique in imagery, structure and format while the project remains conceptually consistent. The installations are installed for a defined period only. Emmanuel uses his own body as his ‘canvas’ and imprints into his skin, using lead type that results in temporary bruising, the names of deceased servicemen killed in action. The artist’s marked body is photographed and the images re-printed onto large, semi-transparent silk banners which are placed in the landscape, acting as a ‘counter memorial’. It is a non-partisan, ‘counter-memorial’ that reflects on impermanence and forgetting. The Lost Men has been selected by the government of France as an official exhibit of the World War One Centennial.

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