‘Study Scene 13’ forms part of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s ongoing preparatory storyboard for ‘It Will End in Tears’, her expansive installation at The Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre in 2024. As with other studies in this series, the work acts as a conceptual anchor, offering a glimpse into the evolving visual language and narrative architecture that will shape the final installation. Rooted in Sunstrum’s distinctive world-building practice, ‘Study Scene 13’ captures a suspended moment within a broader imagined drama. Her figures – often appearing in states of pause, reflection, or transition – exist within spatial environments that feel both theatrical and intimate, drawing on her long-standing interest in cinematic framing and narrative fragmentation.

Reflecting Sunstrum’s lived experiences across Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States, her works are informed by a constellation of references that span ethnography, ecology and quantum theory. This breadth of inquiry is central to Sunstrum’s boundary-crossing approach, which foregrounds Black female subjectivity while interrogating the structural legacies of postcolonial and neocolonial systems. In ‘Study Scene 13’ , the sense of stillness is undercut by an underlying tension – a gesture that suggests histories not immediately visible. As part of her broader ‘It Will End in Tears’ project, the scene becomes one frame in a larger constellation of images that challenge linear narratives, embrace multiplicity, and offer alternative ways of telling, remembering and imagining.

‘Draft - Scene 17’ forms part of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s celebrated body of work commissioned for her solo exhibition ‘It Will End in Tears’ at the Barbican Centre’s The Curve Gallery. The series draws from a wide array of influences including classical portraiture, film noir, theatre, and Sunstrum’s own experiences across multiple geographies. With richly layered surfaces and cinematic staging, the paintings explore the complexities of identity, interiority, and the performance of self. Her figures often appear caught in moments of stillness or transition, positioned between visibility and opacity, intimacy and distance.

‘Study Scene 29’ captures a charged, intimate moment between two figures caught in the suspended gesture of a kiss or perhaps the final moments of a lingering embrace. As with much of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s preparatory work for ‘It Will End in Tears’, the scene is rich with ambiguity, inviting the viewer to consider not just what is seen, but what is felt and withheld. The figures are positioned with theatrical precision, drawing on Sunstrum’s deep engagement with cinematic language, where narrative unfolds not through action alone but through mood, shadow, and the weight of unspoken emotion.

‘Study Scene 29’ reflects the artist’s ongoing interest in the complexity of human relationships within systems of power, longing, and resistance. The image is less about romance than it is about proximity: how two bodies navigate desire, vulnerability, and trust in a world shaped by inherited narratives and social structures. As part of her ‘It Will End in Tears’ series, this scene contributes to a broader meditation on identity and performance, where gestures become acts of defiance, tenderness is political, and intimacy reveals what history often obscures.

‘Draft - Scene 45’ forms part of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s celebrated body of work commissioned for her solo exhibition ‘It Will End in Tears’ at the Barbican Centre’s The Curve Gallery. The series draws from a wide array of influences including classical portraiture, film noir, theatre, and Sunstrum’s own experiences across multiple geographies. With richly layered surfaces and cinematic staging, the paintings explore the complexities of identity, interiority, and the performance of self. Her figures often appear caught in moments of stillness or transition, positioned between visibility and opacity, intimacy and distance.