Pamela Phatsimo SunstrumHerd (quagga) , 2023
"The quagga was an ancient animal, one of the first to roam the lands of Southern Africa and thus a recurrent figure in the ancestral lore of the San and the Khoekhoe peoples. Early European explorers to the region encountered these gentle animals, delighted in how remarkably unafraid the beasts were, and then promptly hunted them to extinction. By all accounts, the meat of the quagga was not very tasty. Its hide—featuring subtle sepia markings resembling a dusty blend of zebra and antelope skin— did not preserve well enough to warrant trophy status. This leads me to imagine that the main reason these docile animals were so swiftly annihilated was for the simple fact that it was easy to do so. This thought sits sour in the back of my throat as I hunt through archival images of what this animal may have looked like. There is one hoax of a photograph dating from the early 1900s depicting what is possibly a painted pony. The only other images we are left with are the wonky field illustrations drawn by Europeans themselves as documentation of their bloody exploits. I often dream of dusty hooves—sometimes of cattle, sometimes of antelopes, and sometimes, far and fading, the hooves of a herd of quagga." - Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum
