Pamela Phatsimo SunstrumStudy Scene 13, 2024
‘Study Scene 13’ forms part of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s ongoing preparatory storyboard for ‘It Will End in Tears’, her expansive installation at The Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre in 2024. As with other studies in this series, the work acts as a conceptual anchor, offering a glimpse into the evolving visual language and narrative architecture that will shape the final installation. Rooted in Sunstrum’s distinctive world-building practice, ‘Study Scene 13’ captures a suspended moment within a broader imagined drama. Her figures – often appearing in states of pause, reflection, or transition – exist within spatial environments that feel both theatrical and intimate, drawing on her long-standing interest in cinematic framing and narrative fragmentation.
Reflecting Sunstrum’s lived experiences across Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States, her works are informed by a constellation of references that span ethnography, ecology and quantum theory. This breadth of inquiry is central to Sunstrum’s boundary-crossing approach, which foregrounds Black female subjectivity while interrogating the structural legacies of postcolonial and neocolonial systems. In ‘Study Scene 13’ , the sense of stillness is undercut by an underlying tension – a gesture that suggests histories not immediately visible. As part of her broader ‘It Will End in Tears’ project, the scene becomes one frame in a larger constellation of images that challenge linear narratives, embrace multiplicity, and offer alternative ways of telling, remembering and imagining.
