Double

Take:

Simnikiwe

Buhlungu

and

Pamela

Phatsimo

Sunstrum,

FRIEZE

Two exhibitions by Southern African women artists, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Simnikiwe Buhlungu, contemplate ‘how we might break apart knowledge.’ Sunstrum's ‘It Will End in Tears’ at The Curve, Barbican and Buhlungu's ‘hygrosummons (iter.01’)’ at Chisenhale Gallery engage themes of liminality and the complexities of knowledge. The artists examine the spaces between certainty and uncertainty, offering contrasting yet complementary reflections on human limitation.

‘It Will End in Tears’ invites viewers into an imagined historical setting, where visual storytelling and crime fiction conventions disrupt the viewer’s relationship with knowledge, power and complicity. In contrast, Buhlungu’s installation uses the “puddle” as metaphor and mode of thought to explore water as a medium of knowledge, history and memory.

Sunstrum’s site-specific installation in collaboration with Remco Osório Lobato, is designed as elaborate storyboards in the tradition of film. Sunstrum invites her viewers into a village idyll, a portrait of rural life in an imaginary 20th-century colonial outpost, complete with porches, staid garments and an aura of restriction.

While Buhlungu embraces the ephemeral and abstract through critical theory, Sunstrum’s narrative-driven work inspires audiences to confront the role fiction plays in shaping what we believe to be true.