In her work, pamela phatsimo sunstrum explores cultural residue: those things we carry that connect us to a place or to a person; those traces that are communicated -- as story, as ritual, as "mouth music"-- and are transmitted between bodies and across landscapes. She is interested in what happens psychologically in the moments of isolation that accompany travel and migration. In her work she reacts to these experiences by replicating or hybridizing a Self-- creating multiple or alternate selves.

sunstrum's most recent work-- including drawings, collages, animations and installations-- feature an alter-ego the artist has invented named Asme (pronounced “Az-mee”). Asme embodies sunstrum's notion of simultaneous selves-- selves that are trans-cultural, trans-historical, trans-geographical. She/they are the hero on a mythic quest. The recurring Canada goose has become a symbol of desire and longing-- a desire towards hybridity, a dangerous sexual longing, or simply a reference to the quest. Much of the work emerges from loose autobiography based on private experiences in journeying and other processes of (dis)location.