Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum's multidisciplinary work encompasses drawing and animation and alludes to mythology, geology, and theories of the nature of the universe. Her drawings, narrative landscapes that appear simultaneously futuristic and ancient, shift between representational and fantastical depictions of volcanic, subterranean, cosmological, and precipitous landscapes. The ideas and images in Sunstrum’s work emerge from an understanding that both mythology and science attempt to construct and deconstruct the same mysteries, namely the nature, history, and future of things and, most significantly, the power of things. In her work, she proposes that the act of imagining is itself a powerful political act and that the politics of imagining the future can invent and allow for the possibility of ‘countercultures. Sunstrum identifies this practice of imagining alternative African futures as a radical political practice of both discovering and occupying what she calls ‘Mythologies of the Future’.
Recent exhibitions and performances include: Cape Town Art Fair (2018); The Phillips Museum of Art, Lancaster (2018); Everard Read Gallery (2016); Interlochen Centre for the Arts, Interlochen (2016); NMMU Bird Street Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth (2016); Tiwani Contemporary, London (2016); VANSA, Johannesburg (2015); Brundyn Gallery, Cape Town (2014); FRAC Pays de Loire, France (2013); the Havana Biennial (2012); and MoCADA, New York (2011).
