Assembly I (talk funny) forms part of Sunstrum’s new body of work that plays out the fictional narrative of a femme fatale figure who embodies the precarity, suspicion and defiance that comes with a return and desire for access. 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.

"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

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s ‘Interview II’ evokes the bureaucratic spaces of colonial administration – border posts, visa offices, waiting rooms – where power dynamics are quietly but forcefully enacted. Drawing on her childhood memories of landscapes across Botswana, Canada, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Malawi, and Panama, Sunstrum constructs a backdrop that shifts between the imagined and the remembered, shaped by her fascination with Dutch skies and the structured compositions of South African painter Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef. In ‘Interview II’, landscape is not merely context but a psychological and political terrain, charged with questions of movement, legitimacy, and belonging.

The ambiguous relationship between the two seated figures invites reflection on the protocols of permission: who is allowed to leave, to stay, to belong. Their quiet tension and staged positioning suggest a performance of identity within inherited systems of control. One figure appears slightly translucent, her presence uncertain, as if caught between visibility and erasure. Through this work, Sunstrum continues her interrogation of border politics, not only in the geopolitical sense but also as a metaphor for the internal and external conditions that shape one's sense of self. Inflected with Afrofuturist sensibilities, ‘Interview’ II questions the authority of dominant historical narratives, positioning identity as both ancestral and speculative, always in flux.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s work draws on mythology, geology, and theories of the universe to explore expansive questions around time, identity, and belonging. Her painting practice brings together layered landscapes and recurring figures that exist between ancient worlds and speculative futures. Informed by her lived experience across Africa, South Asia, and North America, Sunstrum engages with ideas of hybridity, memory, and displacement. Her compositions juxtapose narrative and abstraction, using symbolic references, shifting perspectives, and temporal dislocations to reflect on how identity is shaped through movement and inherited histories.

‘You'll be sorry’ forms part of Sunstrum’s recent body of work centred on a fictional femme fatale figure, reimagined as a symbol of precarity, suspicion, and the defiance that accompanies return and reclamation. Through her subjects, Sunstrum challenges the archetype of the femme fatale, which has historically relied on reductive and often misogynistic portrayals of women across literature, cinema, and visual art. The figures become a device for interrogating border politics – both in the geopolitical sense and in the more intimate, psychological experience of feeling on the edge of belonging.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s (b. 1980, Botswana) multidisciplinary practice encompasses drawing, painting, installation and animation. Her work alludes to mythology, geology and theories on the nature of the universe. Sunstrum’s drawings take the form of narrative landscapes that appear simultaneously futuristic and ancient, shifting between representational and fantastical depictions of volcanic, subterranean, cosmological and precipitous landscapes. Her work ‘The Pavilion’ (2023) was shown at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE last year and was Sunstrum’s first UK solo exhibition at a public institution.

Just you wait and Ke ya gae form part of Sunstrum’s new body of work that plays out the fictional narrative of a femme fatale figure who embodies the precarity, suspicion and defiance that comes with a return and desire for access. 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.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s (b. 1980, Botswana) multidisciplinary practice encompasses drawing, painting, installation and animation. Her work alludes to mythology, geology and theories on the nature of the universe. Sunstrum’s drawings take the form of narrative landscapes that appear simultaneously futuristic and ancient, shifting between representational and fantastical depictions of volcanic, subterranean, cosmological and precipitous landscapes. Her work ‘The Pavilion’ (2023) was shown at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE last year and was Sunstrum’s first UK solo exhibition at a public institution.

Just you wait and Ke ya gae form part of Sunstrum’s new body of work that plays out the fictional narrative of a femme fatale figure who embodies the precarity, suspicion and defiance that comes with a return and desire for access. 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.