Paul Emmanuel’s Transitions: The White South African Male in Process

In the installation of twenty-five drawings on exposed photographic paper made between 2005 and 2008 Paul Emmanuel explores the ritual events that construct masculinity and, in his words, “help to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history.” Although the rituals are familiar—circumcision, induction into the military, marriage, a birthday toast— their representations are left deliberately open-ended and ambiguous. Through his meticulous technique, Emmanuel rigorously examines these liminal moments of transition and, by extension, the tenuous and unstable status of the white male in postapartheid South Africa.