Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum
You'll be sorry
Goodman Gallery presents You’ll be sorry, an exhibition of new large-scale paintings by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum. This body of work, created in Sunstrum’s new studio in The Hague, unpacks the concept of homecoming and expands on a core thematic impulse in her practice: the push and pull between the personal and the universal narrative, presenting cinematic scenes that slip between the real and the imagined.
You’ll be sorry marks Sunstrum’s first solo presentation in the Johannesburg gallery, a city that played a significant role in shaping the artist’s identity post international studies and her residency at the Bag Factory in 2010 where Sunstrum worked alongside the likes of the late David Koloane and Sam Nhlengthwa.
The figure is seen in gathering spaces; lines outside bureaucratic buildings, seating areas outside the home, by the river. Occupying the liminal spaces of colonial outposts and government offices, the vulnerability of requesting permission to leave or stay is poignant. It brings to the surface the residue and hierarchy of colonial power structures. The figure’s ambiguity is highlighted through her staged positions and disjointed placement within the environment, coupled with her translucent appearance. This provides an interrogation of border politics in the geopolitical sense as well as a feeling of being on the border, an outsider, within one's immediate circumstances.
Born in Botswana, Sunstrum’s evocative - and sometimes provocative - paintings consider the impact of returning home with new experiences and exposure to new knowledge systems, and the psychological shift that occurs through this process. The work considers how a sense of belonging is ascribed and felt at a personal level as well as within larger historical and global contexts.
The experience of going away and coming back to a home place after having new experiences or having access to new resources has always been quite a fraught experience for myself and one that you feel really physically when you make that shift from being away to being back home. I've been thinking about that so much with this work. My connection to place in Botswana or in South Africa or Southern Africa at large has always felt very tenuous because of the ways that my personal background has always seemed at odds with a particular obsession with taxonomy that continues to characterise and undermine life in Southern Africa. - Sunstrum
A simplified palette offers a reflection on land and landscape through earthbound pigments while placing the paintings within imagery from Sunstrum’s grandmother’s village in Botswana. This show also presents a temporal shift for the artist, with previous works referencing cosmic and mythological deep-time. Here, Sunstrum moves towards the mid 20th century; a moment when independence movements across African countries were heightened, access to privileges through European assimilation was intensively interrogated and when artists from the continent were showcasing the tensions between city living, rural life and life abroad.
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s (b. 1980, Mochudi, Botswana) work alludes to mythology, geology and theories on the nature of the universe. Her work includes imagery that reflects the diverse genealogies of her experience living in different parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. as well as ongoing research in ethnography, ecology, and quantum physics. The artist’s boundary-crossing practice centres Black female identity in the discourse of postcolonialism and neocolonialism, highlighting the contributions of overlooked historical figures while emphasising modes of knowledge and communication beyond the status quo.
In 2024, a major new solo exhibition opened at KM21 Den Haag, including a new large scale diptych painting within an installation that included items from the museum’s furniture collection. Sunstrum also presented her first solo exhibition titled ‘It Will End in Tears’, at a major UK institution, the Barbican Centre’s The Curve. Sunstrum took her life-size wood grain panoramas round the bend of the gallery, building a narrativised sequence with elements of film noir, crime fiction and pure drama.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 'It Will End In Tears,' Barbican London, UK (2024); 'You’ll be sorry,' Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2023), 'The Pavillion,' London Mithraeum, Bloomberg SPACE, London (2023); 'All my seven faces,' Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2019); Michaelis School for the Arts at the University of Cape Town (2018); Interlochen Centre for the Arts, Interlochen (2016).
Group exhibitions and biennales include: 'Born in Flames: Feminist Futures,' The Bronx Museum of the Arts NY, USA (2021); 'WITNESS: Afro Perspectives' from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami, USA (2020).
Collections include: Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, Hessel Museum at Bard College, New York, A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; University of Cape Town, Cape Town; Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt; El Espacio 23, Miami; FRAC des Pays de la Loire Contemporary Collection, Carquefou; University of South Africa (UNISA) Art Collection.
Sunstrum lives and works in The Hague, Netherlands.
