Botswana-born, Toronto-based artist, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum (b. 1980) is interested in the overlap between mythology and science. She uses video, animation, and avatars named Asme (“as me”) to explore surprising parallels across modern science and ancient texts. All my seven faces will feature over 20 works including a new, large scale mural to create a re-imagining of her own life/timeline.

By design, the exhibition will conjure a transformative space that evokes the impression of traveling through a tunnel. Visual nods to elements of Tswana home adornment traditions as well as sand embankments along the perimeter of the gallery where the walls meet the floor will heighten this sense of passage and location. The visitor’s journey through the exhibition culminates in a new mural on a grand-scale that responds to Zaha Hadid’s architecture like never before. The mural presents a pair of Asme in the midst of traditional housing leading into futuristic constructions and civilization, the overall shape of which forms an arch between where the artist is from and what the future holds.

“Pamela’s work considers imagination as a radical, contemporary praxis, one which, through thought, enables radical alterity within a reality, often perceived as fixed and univocal,” says Valentine Umansky, CAC Curator of Lens-Based Arts.

This mid-career survey will present the largest display of works by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum to date, and will be accompanied by the launch of the first monograph devoted to the artist’s work.