Shaping The Possibilities In The African Art Market

EDITORIAL

Three Artists Centering Women In Their Practice

There is a need for female artists to create art that centers women and expands on the complexities of women’s lived experience. Ghada Amer, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby are three artists known for highlighting women exclusively in their creative and artistic practice. As they explore the female form, identity, and sexuality, their portrayal of women is beyond insightful and inclusive.

Painting, sculpting, photographing, collaging, weaving, and creating mixed-media installations—these three artists are reimagining the multiple spaces women can occupy in the world. With each project even more daring than the last, Ghada Amer, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby are expanding the discourse in progress, revealing how women are breaking away from the norm and extending the limitations put upon women in society. In their continuous exploration and experimentation, their practice centers women in community with one another and in spaces of power, rest, leisure, and pleasure.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

Born in Mochudi, Botswana, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s multidisciplinary practice is centered heavily on women. Her recently concluded exhibition, Parabellum, at Galerie Lelong included representational paintings and drawings of women. Her works prompt consideration of how information and control are exchanged in a gendered space, while offering glimpses into the multifaceted experiences of feminine friendship and camaraderie. Imbued with a relentless realism, her works are contemporary feminist images made through deceptively superannuated means. They are insightful portrayals of all kinds of women, in all kinds of situations.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, An education, 2025, oil on cradled wood panel, 140 x 200 x 6 cm. Image courtesy of Galerie Lelong.