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BIOGRAPHY
Sue Pam-Grant views her transdisciplinary practice as processual. For her, the acts of painting, of drawing, of writing are all performances of the line. When she embraces writing and bookmaking she crosses the divide in art criticism between writing and performing: Writing is of the mind; performance is of the body; writing is private, performance is public. When a woman artist overleaps this distinction and sees disciplines as interrelating, she breaks down disciplines. As the French feminist theorist Hélène Cixous suggests in the title of her influential book, The Laugh of the Medusa, this type of feminine / feminist irruption is a Dionysian laugh at Apollonian order.
Similarly, practice transects the psychoanalytic boundary between Self and Other. For Sue Pam-Grant, most influential among the many artists who have drawn upon psychoanalysis is Louise Bourgeois. Bourgeois, who was in psychoanalysis for thirty-five years until her therapist died, said that art gave her direct access to her subconscious, like a parallel form of psychoanalysis. For Sue Pam-Grant, when art, an interdisciplinary practice, meets the intersubjective practice of psychoanalysis, the private and personal become public and take material form.
Sue Pam-Grant presented “Crazy Moths Performance Encounter,” a “meditation on the artist’s process,” at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in November 2024. This work combines art and performance, the psychoanalytical space and the studio setting. RoseLee Goldberg, art historian of performance art and the founder of Performa, NYC, aptly discerned in it “a thoughtful and intense rendering of Louise Bourgeois.” First performed in 2023 at The Baxter Theatre, Cape Town for 24 performances, William Kentridge then hosted performances at The Centre for the Less Good Idea. It was adapted into a six-week immersive residency at the South African National Gallery in July/August 2024, and then at Stellenbosch Toyota Wordfees 2024, where it was nominated for Best Solo Performance.
Collaboration is a fertile field for exploring the terrain between Self and Other. Sue Pam-Grant’s critically acclaimed performance career includes longstanding artistic collaboration with William Kentridge. In 2008, she suggested Kentridge perform in his own work, and then directed Kentridge’s first performed lecture, I am not me, the Horse is not mine, which featured at MoMA in 2010 and traveled widely. Subsequent participation in Kentridge’s projects as performer and maker include HouseBoy (REDCAT Theatre, 2022 and Brown Arts Institute, 2024), O Sentimental Machine (2015 Istanbul Biennale), and multiple seasons at Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea. She is a filmmaker and continues to act, direct, and adapt such works as Patrick Suskind’s The Pigeon and Kafka’s The Common Confusion.
During 2025, while featuring at the Cape Town Art Fair, Sue Pam-Grant embarked on a collaboration with Yoshi Ikeya, sparked when she discovered on Instagram a drawing he had posted of wind-tossed washing hanging on a line that was strikingly like one of her own. Discovering a profound connection in their practices, they commenced a daily exchange of works between Cape Town and Tokyo. Each responds to the other’s transmission in a psychodynamic, tactile process that blurs the lines between Self and Other, creator and creation, allowing them to tap into the subconscious and explore the nuances of their parallel artistic expressions as well the spaces between their perspectives. The collaboration’s title, “14,734 Dots Between,” winks at Paul Klee’s notion that “a line is a dot that went for a walk” and measures the kilometers between the artists’ studios, the “space in between” that separates and unites them. The artists met physically for the first time in Tokyo in June 2025 for joint performances.
SELECTED CV
EDUCATION
2021 Master’s degree in Fine Art (University of Witwatersrand) with Distinction
2023 Honorary Doctorate and Fellow, Parkmore Institute, Doctor of Psychosocial Studies / Intervention
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 ‘why do moths fly like crazy kcufs in the night,’ The South African National Gallery, Cape Town, six-week immersive residency exhibition
2024‘why do moths fly like crazy fucks in the night’ New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute
2023 ‘why do moths fly like crazy fucks in the night.’ Baxter Theatre, Cape Town
2021 SHE LINES, solo exhibition, TPO Wits Gallery, Johannesburg
2021 The Touch, solo exhibition, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg
2020 All of the Gone, solo transdisciplinary show, Nel on Long Street, Cape Town
2020 “Duel/Duet: The Every Love Story,” Arts Town Riebeeck Valley
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 14 734 Dots Between, collaboration with Yoshikazu Ikeya. Installation and live painting performance in three parts . Tokyo, Japan
2024 why do moths fly like crazy kcufs in the night,’ five-day durational performance at Stellenbosch Toyota Wordfees, nominated for Best Solo Performance
2021 Divided Self, group show, Kalashnikovv Gallery @P72 Project Space
2021 “Houseboy,” performer, directed by William Kentridge, Season 7 at Centre for the Less Good Idea
2021 Created and performed in Patrick Suskind’s “The Pigeon” and Franz Kafka’s “The Common Confusion,” during Season 7, “Adapting the Novel,” Centre for the Less Good Idea
2020-2021 Participated in several one-minute and three-minute works during COVID-19 lockdown, produced by William Kentridge, Centre for the Less Good Idea
2020 “The impossibility of Painting in the Mind of an Artist that May Die Tomorrow,” Group show, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg
2020 Group show, Kalashnikovv Gallery booth at Johannesburg Art Fair
2020 8-hour performance With Kevin Smith, produced by William Kentridge, Centre for the Less Good Idea
2018 Collaborations with William Kentridge, Centre of the Less Good Idea, Season 5
2015 Solo performer for William Kentridge’s multimedia “O Sentimental Machine,” première at Istanbul Biennial
2008 Directed William Kentridge in “I am not me, the Horse is not mine,” which travelled widely, including to MoMA (2010)