Pamela Sunstrum


Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum is a figurative artist and designer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work has been featured in numerous galleries and exhibitions, including Tiwani Contemporary in London, England and the Museum of African Design in Johannesburg.

Biography

Sunstrum was born in 1980 in Mochudi, Botswana, and spent her childhood in different parts of Africa and southeast Asia. She came to the United States in 1998 and received a BA with Highest Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in International Studies with a concentration in Trans-national Cultures in 2004. Sunstrum received her MFA from the Mt. Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007. She later lived in Baltimore Maryland as an artist in residence at the Baltimore Creative Alliance, while also teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is currently based out of Johannesburg, South Africa while showcasing in both individual and group exhibitions around the world. Sunstrum was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Art & Art History of York University in 2017.

Professional career

Driven by a fascination with ancient mythologies and scientific theories, Sunstrum muses on the origins of time, geological concepts, and ideas about the universe. Her works on paper, large-scale installations, and stop-motion films are rooted in autobiography, addressing the development of transnational identities, human connections, and cross-border rituals. Motivated by her experiences in diverse locales, Sunstrum explores how one’s sense of identity develops within geographic and cultural contexts. Her drawings – narrative landscapes that appear simultaneously futuristic and ancient – shift between representational and fantastical depictions of volcanic, subterranean, cosmological, and precipitous landscapes.
Having lived in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States, Sunstrum developed an alter-ego, Asme, to convey her evolving selfhood. The image of Asme is often super- imposed with overlapping gestures as a means of suggesting compounded time, illustrating her universal, atemporal existence. Sunstrum’s landscapes also expand on themes of timelessness; she reconstructs sites both real and imagined to reveal the small scale of individuals within the vast universe, a concept that is reminiscent of 18th-century notions of the sublime.

Exhibitions