Artist Profile:

Pam Guhrs

Pam Guhrs

Nationality: Zambian

Art Education: MA in Fine Arts researching initiation material culture and rock art from University of Witwatersrand in process.

Biography:
Pam Guhrs-Carr was born in Malawi and raised in Zambia in one of Africa’s prolific wildlife areas, the Luangwa valley where her father Norman Carr was Game Warden and later a well known conservationist. After obtaining a Fine Art degree from WITS University in Johannesburg she returned to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia with her husband where she taught and raised her two daughters in the bush and later read a Masters in Fine art, anthropology and rock art at WITS University. Living in Luangwa’s remote wilderness environment has informed her work on multiple levels as she draws on its history, indigenous cultures and biodiversity. She was deeply immersed into the Kunda subsistence way of life which has become part of her lived experience and has shaped her identity, so much so that her two daughters are both initiated as Kunda. Her work challenges hackneyed perceptions of animals in Africa. From western eyes that visit zoos and Game Reserves to indigenous perceptions of animals as intrinsically linked to ancestors, she revisions the metaphors that bind humans and animals.Some of the black and white tar images are inspired by her research of the rock paintings of eastern Zambia and their relation to contemporary matrilineal Zambian women’s initiation practices. She has exhibited in Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, USA and London. Her work is represented in museums and collections internationally and has been auctioned by Christies in London.

Artworks:

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