Front Room

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s Front Room features the artist’s alter ego, Asme (“as me”), a figure she invented to provide distance from the autobiographical elements of her work. Here, Asme sits within a domestic interior, surrounded by three other women. Two of these women hold Asme’s hands, offering comfort and assurance. Sunstrum’s composition references the 1866 painting The Hesitant Fiancée (La fiancée hésitante) by 19th-century French painter Auguste Toulmouche (1829–1895). In contrast to Toulmouche’s bride-to-be, who reveals momentary doubt, Asme conveys an expression of barely restrained rage–—a defiant reaction to the social and cultural expectations that constrain women’s lives. With its flattened pictorial space and conspicuous patterning, Sunstrum’s painting zeroes in on the women’s faces, presenting a psychologically complex portrait of a woman’s domain.