Notes

Printed by Sara Aimee Verity at Artist Proof Studio.

"Paul Emmanuel, who has been rethinking the conventions of monuments for nearly two decades, recognizes the futility of attempting to embalm the past, especially in the current post-1994 era when South African history is being re-examined, contested and revised to include numerous voices and perspectives.

The title of Emmanuel’s decades-long project is direct: Lost Men. The term is resonant, speaking to both lost lives and lost histories. Because history is narrated by wars, the majority of monuments are memorials, commemorating wars, and celebrating the assumed heroism of those who died. Lost Men, with the ‘left/right’ marching rhythm of its name, puts the sine qua non of war up front: the violent death of human beings … There are many ideas and concepts his work asks us to examine: the construction of masculinity through concepts of aggression and war, the vulnerability of the masculine body itself, and the pathos of the impermanence of memory."

Pamela Allara (2020) Between Men and Monuments: The Art of Paul Emmanuel, https://artbeyondquarantine.blogspot.com/2020/03/between-men-and-monuments-art-of-paul.html

Exhibited

Carol Schlosberg Alumni Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Boston M.A., USA, Reviewing the Past, group exhibition, 18 January to 19 March 2022.

Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, Paul Emmanuel: Men and Monuments, 3 March 2020 to 30 April 2021.

Fried Contemporary, Pretoria, Impermanence: Paul Emmanuel, 8 March to 7 April 2018

808 Gallery, Boston University, Boston, M.A., USA, Paul Emmanuel: Remnants, 28 January to 20 March 2016.

Art Source South Africa, Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, 2015.

Literature

Annette Becker (2020) 'Paul Emmanuel: The Lost Men France', in Paul Emmanuel, Karen von Veh (ed) Paul Emmanuel, Johannesburg: Wits Museum,10–26.