Cyphers

In 2009 at the request of Eneria Njovu, a friend and local initiation teacher, Pam and a group of women travelled to a rock art site in eastern Zambia. The cyphers painted on the walls, recognisable as Kunda matrilineal women’s initiation symbols and images, represent coded knowledge passed down through generations, associated with coming of age rites. In conversation with the women who guard these teachings as elders, and who are concerned about the loss of traditional knowledge to a younger generation, Pam’s work poses important questions about how ritual knowledge is both protected and shared. Pam engages with the cyphers by drawing them in pitch or tar while blindfolded. This repetition releases the unconscious gesture and the underlying emotional aspects of the form. She then scales up the drawings using a grid - calling into question how the western gaze seeks to capture and control ritual knowledge with objective precision. Elsewhere, images of cellphones in relation to the images raise questions about the commodification of African indigenous knowledge through art-making practice, turning the lens on her own culpability as producer of image - and ours as viewers.