Goodman Gallery
26.10 - 24.11.2023
Born in Botswana in 1980, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, now rooted in a new studio in the Hague, embodies the essence of a multidisciplinary artist. Her creative domain spans the realms of drawing, painting, installation and the ethereal dance of animation. Her latest solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery carries the weight of a homecoming. Johannesburg 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. Aptly titled You’ll be sorry, this show is a whistle in a choir.
I arrived early for our interview, so I wandered through the exhibition, as I waited for her to conclude another interview with a fellow writer. The background dialogue between them seemed to flow like a sound installation, setting the stage for her triumphant artworks. The works compel me to pause; there’s a dynamic flourish in the fold between her technique and play, an exquisite dance between control and surrender. She achieved this effect through her line work which, in musical terms, could be regarded as a legato In music performance and notation, legato ([leˈɡaːto]; Italian for “tied together”; French lié; German gebunden) indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected. That is, the player makes a transition from note to note with no intervening silence. Sunstrum’s early career as a theatre actress and dancer has no doubt left an indelible impression on her perception.
She also uses the eraser in a technique that gives birth to indeterminate apparitions—ghostly emanations of herself. In reference to this, she says, “I use myself as a model in most of my works…to implicate myself, this is the only body I have the right to use and abuse…Asme, this alter ego, entered into the practice really early, because I realised, this is the body I can put on the line because it’s mine. I can make it vulnerable, I can expose it, because it’s the only body I have the right to do that to and, as much as I’d like to use other bodies, I feel I don’t want to instrumentalise someone other than myself.”
I couldn’t resist pondering the seeming coincidence that her artistic avatar’s name, “Asme,” translates to “Beloved” in French Arabic, the very title of Gabrielle Goliath’s concurrent exhibition. Pamela, with a mischievous glint in her eye, insisted it was a mere happenstance, though I harboured doubts. Jestingly, I suggested that she might be a time traveller, to which she responded with laughter, recounting how she’d made similar claims, met mostly with disbelief.
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Ke ya gae, 2023. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.
The first image I query her about is a pencil drawing on two sheets of paper of an old woman holding a little girl’s hand titled Ke ya gae (2023). She tells me it’s a portrait from an old photograph of her late great grandmother. This humble drawing renders a vivid chronicle that transcends the boundaries of linear time. The two figures occupy two different surfaces in the same space. This image – a conspicuous emblem within the rich tapestry of Sunstrum artistic oeuvre in its simplicity – encapsulates the notion of the trans spatiotemporal, seamlessly weaving three generations of women into a singular tableau, a potent narrative eternally unfurling in the present moment.
This sense of a narrative unfurling suffused the exhibition with a cinematic quality. . The compositions that grace her canvases – as in the eponymous painting, You’ll be sorry – are not passive vestiges, but active conduits of a moving narrative. They are not merely posed; they are directed, attuned to the cadence of a story unfolding. In this immersive exhibition, we, the audience, stand as spectators of a silent cinema, where we are orchestrators of time, dictating the tempo of our journey through the gallery.
In response to the question of the relationship between her work and cinema, Sunstrum responds, “I use references to cinema as a way of understanding how an image can work…I often find myself pausing films, because I framed it. I want to know the difference between this gesture and that gesture, what does this communicate and why? Because, this millisecond later, it can communicate something else. So the cinematic, dramatic, theatrical, the idea of tableau of scenography is really important in how I think about an image.”
As I looked around the first chamber of the gallery, my attention was grabbed by an enigmatic two panel drawing made from crayon and pencil titled The tall grasses bend for you (2023). It centres on the ethereal feet of a woman ensconced in stockings and ensnared by the allure of blue heels in a grassy field near a body of water. In its compositional style, it stood alone. When I inquired about the painting, Sunstrum revealed that creating such an intimate close-up painting was an unusual departure from her typical work.
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, The tall grasses bend for you, 2023. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.
In the realm of classical cinema, the close-up typically serves as a fractional component in the symphony of the whole, a subtle illusion, offering an indirect representation of time, thereby conjuring the semblance of reality. However, in Sunstrum’s audacious embrace of the close-up, a peculiar alchemy emerges. A rift materialises, demarcating the space between viewer, image, and subject, heralding a transformation in the language of perception. Sunstrum’s use of the close-up, deftly represents “pars pro toto,” conjuring forth the hidden contours of the human form that often elude our immediate gaze. In the absence of human faces, it shifts the narrative, redefining the emotional resonances that spectators have grown accustomed to within Sunstrum’s oeuvre, a world primarily populated by visages and full-bodied figures. I’m intrigued.
We walk into the main exhibition chamber. The first image I ask about is titled And Love was like a girl (dikgomo) (2023). The image is of a girl running, flanked by a herd of Ankole. Sunstrum shares how the image (and a couple others) are composites of photographs her father took in her childhood; she mentions how they moved a lot as a family due to her parents’ career obligations. I wonder if the displacement of moving around so much as a child inspired the sharp staccato of motion in her images, or the displacement in the wood panels that make up the work, never quite in alignment – perhaps the painter’s version of a dutch angle.
As our conversation meandered, we realised we’d been standing for a long time and suggested we sit down on the bench facing two paintings side by side. Tips (2023) and The Dream I (forefathers) (2023). As we discuss the former, I ask about the woman with the knife. She speaks of Ophilia, a seemingly wayward female character in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth – a story that unfolds as a dark and intricate fairytale. This film is both a tapestry woven from the fabric of history and a fantastical odyssey traversing the realms of childhood’s terrors and marvels. Its essence resides in the uncanny manner it mirrors these dual facets, holding them in tandem as parallel realities. She shares her admiration for a scene where Ophilia, ensconced in the domain of the kitchen and summoned by her name, deftly wipes and tucks and folds the knife she’s using into her apron. We use knives to nurture, but we also use them in war. The soul of a knife is in its ability to cut – it becomes the seam that binds the worlds of creation and destruction.
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Tips, 2023. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.
In The Dream I (2023), nestled within the tender embrace of that liminal juncture where time and space converge, one finds the corporeal figures their bodies entangled in a quartet. A herd of kudu stands behind them, looking back, beckoning us down a passage of frosty light. Who are these people, untethered from the moorings of place and temporal certainty, staring, in judgement, in wonder? How does one process a dream? In setswana culture, the kudu totem, with its spiralling horns, is associated with the demotic spirit. The serrated contours of their horns, like the script of a communal language, evoke the ethereal essence.
Within You’ll be sorry, an extraordinary sense of time emerges in the ordinary, born from chance encounters and reminiscent moments. The technique of erasing and redrawing on the same surface creates a tension that renders her subjects ghostly, dreamlike, speaking directly to the realm of thought and time. In this way, time and thought become tangible and visible. Each piece offered a glimpse into her life, with memory as its guiding star. They touched on the themes of home, the invention of notations, and the intricate logic underlying her practice, akin to a sustained meditation on the power of gesture and its ability to transcend the boundaries of space and time.
As the conversation winded down, I finally asked about the title of the show, You’ll be sorry. At first glance, it seems negative, yet, one may employ this phrase as a cautionary note, a whispered concern, a testament to genuine solicitude for the other’s path. If you miss this exhibition, you’ll be sorry.
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, The Dream I (forefathers), 2023. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.
