'Transitions' @ Smithsonian National Museum Of African Art

International Mon 28-06-2010

'Transitions' @ Smithsonian National Museum Of African Art
Courtesy Of Art Source|South Africa

Paul Emmanuel’s critically acclaimed touring museum solo exhibition TRANSITIONS, opened to the public at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington DC on 12 May 2010.

Untitled by Paul Emmanuel

Launched in 2008, TRANSITIONS is the artist’s most significant project to date. It has received critical acclaim during its showing in South Africa. The exhibition and film project explores moments of shifting white male identity and liminal spaces, which took Emmanuel over 4 years to research and create.

TRANSITIONS comprises a series of five ostensibly ‘photographic’ works which when examined closely, are revealed as sensitively hand-drawn, photo-realist sequences of images. These film-like progressions obsessively capture liminal moments of five transitory stages in a man's life.

A sixth work titled 3SAI: A RITE OF PASSAGE – a 14 minute film produced by the artist – documents the head shaving of new recruits at the Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley, South Africa. This is one of two South African military training camps that still perform the obligatory hair shaving of army recruits when they join the South African National Defense Force.

Untitled by Paul Emmanuel

For the artist, these moments that he observed raised a number of questions. During South Africa’s Apartheid era, obligatory head shaving was an enforced rite of passage for thousands of white male conscripts. This film extends the content of the second of the five drawings.

The project was launched in October 2008 at the Apartheid Museum, and thereafter successfully completed a tour of South African Museums.

The project has enjoyed great success throughout South Africa and been well received by reviewers. The critically acclaimed experimental short film 3SAI: A RITE OF PASSAGE, won the 2009 jury prize in the Short Film Competition at the 4th Africa-In-Motion Film Festival of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in the UK.

3 SAI: A RITE OF PASSAGE was also selected for:
•    2009 12th Antimatter International Film Festival in Victoria, Canada
•    2009 Design Indaba Expo National Film Festival in Cape Town, South Africa.
•    2010 International Film Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
•    2010 Séquence Court Métrage International Film Festival, Toulouse, France
•    2010 Videogud International Video Art Programme and Festival, Sweden.

Untitled by Paul Emmanuel

Emmanuel says, “I am delighted with the success the project has experienced so far. It is a huge honor for any artist to be considered by such a prestigious institution as the Smithsonian; I am grateful for this well-timed opportunity which will leverage my career in ways that I can only begin to imagine.”

Transitions will run until 22 August Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington DC.

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