Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum: The Gods and The Underdogs: KM21, The Hague, Netherlands

Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, The Gods and The Underdogs, now on view at KM21, The Hague, Netherlands. This marks the artist's first solo institutional exhibition in Europe. 

The exhibition's title references an essay by the influential South African writer Bessie Head (1937-1986). From 1964 onwards she lived in Botswana, having been issued an ‘exit permit’ which permitted her to leave South Africa but never to return, under the apartheid laws in force at the time. Exit Permit is also the title of Sunstrum’s new installation, a highlight of the exhibition, which consists of two large paintings shown in a staged setting with items of furniture from Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s decorative arts collection. The setting, which recalls a waiting room, refers to the colonial outposts that still exist in Botswana (and other countries) today: bureaucratic, makeshift headquarters where decisions about individual lives were taken.

The Gods and The Underdogs also includes an overview of recent drawings and paintings that have never before been shown in the Netherlands. We see women in their Sunday best waiting on wooden benches, a parade of schoolgirls in uniform, ghostly ancestral apparitions, and extinct animals of the steppe. The layered works, full of color, are both tender and defiant, intimate and monumental at the same time. Together, they raise urgent, topical questions about power relations, displacement, identity and autonomy, about gods and underdogs.

Image: Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, The Interview II, 2023. Crayon, pencil and oil on wood panels, 200 x 140 cm. Courtesy the artist, Goodman Gallery, Galerie Lelong.