Dr Amie Soudien

Amie Soudien (she/her) is a lecturer in Art History and Discourse of Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. Her research is invested in the intersections of art, history and gender studies concerning histories of enslavement in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. In her work, she explores the commemoration of enslavement in South Africa through contemporary art, performance, and other creative practices. Her writing is featured in the NIHSS Award-winning Pamela Sunstrum Creative Book (2020), the anthology ArtThrob: 25 Years of Art Writing in South Africa (2023), and the edited volume Spaces of Care: Confronting Colonial Afterlives in European Ethnographic Museums (2023), among other publications. She is the editor of 'Lesser Violence: Volume 1' (2022) published by MaThoko's Books, an imprint of the GALA Queer Archive, and the co-editor of Standing Items: Critical pedagogies in South African art, design and architecture (2020). 

 

Over the course of her career, Soudien has worked at a number of leading cultural organisations and institutions including the GALA Queer Archive, the District Six Museum, the Wits School of Arts, and the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre. She has held fellowships at the Institute of Creative Arts, University of Cape Town (2016) and the Research Centre for Material Culture, Wereldmuseum (2024). 

 

Soudien completed her BAFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2013, graduated with her MA in New Arts Journalism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), USA in 2016 and completed her PhD in Art History at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in 2024. 

 

Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-2814-9671

 

Scholarships and awards 

Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Postgraduate Award, 2015 and 2023

Canon Collins Sol Plaatje Scholarship, 2023-2024                                                                      

Mellon Memory Studies PhD Funding Grant, 2020-2022

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Class Prize, 2016

University of Cape Town, Dean’s List, 2010-2013 

 

Fellowships 

Research Fellow, Research Center for Material Culture, Wereldmuseum, 2024. 

Asia Art Archive, Institute for Comparative Modernities (Cornell University), and the Dhaka Art Summit: Modern Art Histories in and Across Africa, South and SouthEast Asia (MAHASSA), 2019-2020. 

National Fellowship: Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), University of Cape Town, 2016. 

 

Academic publications      

2023. ‘Alongside One Another: Myth-Making and Risk in Narrativising Enslavement at the Cape of Good Hope’ in Spaces of Care - Confronting Colonial Afterlives in European Ethnographic Museums, eds. Wayne Modest and Claudia Augustat. Bielefeld: transcript.   

Ed. Amie Soudien. 2022. Lesser Violence: Volume 1. Johannesburg: MaThoko’s Books. 

2022. Hope and indictment: the work of Sophie Peters. Cape Town: Creative Knowledge Production.

2020. ‘Landscapes of meaning’ in There are mechanisms in place: Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum Creative Book, eds. Nomusa Makhubu and Nkule Mabaso. Cape Town: Michaelis School of Fine Art.

Eds. Gray, B., Cullinan Cook, S., Toffa, T. and Soudien, A. 2020. Standing Items: Critical pedagogies in South African art, design and architecture. Johannesburg: Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre.

2019. Memory, multiplicity and participatory curation at the District Six Museum, Cape Town. Critical Arts 33(6), 67-82. 

 

Other publications  

2021. ‘Reflections on between a whisper and a cry (2019) by Alberta Whittle’. [In Review]. 

2020. ‘Working alone, together: presenting the Wits Young Artist Award 2020 Winners’. Mail & Guardian.                                                           

2020. ‘Landscapes of meaning: mechanism and memory in depictions of disaster’. Mail & Guardian.                                                                   

2018. ‘What lies beyond: 9 More Weeks’. ArtThrob.                                                                     

2017. ‘Coloured Mentality: The pertinent web series exploring coloured identity in SA’. Between 10 and 5.                    

2017. ‘17 people who have our attention in 2017’. Mail & Guardian.                            

2017. ‘District Six: Performance, Absence, Reflection’. Adjective: Issue 1, Volume 1. 

2017. ‘Backwards and Forwards: Thania Petersen’s “Remnants”’. ArtThrob.      

2017. ‘Prerequisites to the Human Chain’. Adjective: Issue 2, Volume 1. 

2017. ‘Jabu Nadia Newman casts a new gaze’. Mail & Guardian. 

2017. ‘The Sanctuary Disturbed: Jessica Webster’s “Wisteria”’. ArtThrob.

2017. ‘Invisible, Intangible, Insensible: Barbara Wildenboer’s “The Invisible Gardener”’.  ArtThrob.                                                         

2017. ‘City Report: Cape Town’. Frieze Magazine.                                                       

2017. ‘When Art Gives You Lemons’. Fnews.                                                                   

2016. ‘The Art of Disruptions, Iziko SANGPast and Present Struggles: “The Art of Disruptions” at ISANG’. ArtThrob.                                                                                                           

2016. ‘To Support the Substance: “Selling the Shadow” at Gallery MOMO’. ArtThrob. 

2016. ‘A History of Queerness: Confronting Intolerance through the work of Angel-Ho and Queezy’. ArtAFRICA.

2016. ‘On Nicholas Hlobo’s Sewing Saw’. Adjective. 

2015. ‘How to make it in Chicago Fashion’. Fnews.                                                   

2015. ‘Public Explorations of Anxiety’. Fnews.

2014. ‘Deborah Poynton’s Model for a World: A survey of 25 years of painting’. ArtThrob. 

 

 

Conferences, symposia and public engagements                             

 

Presenter, Michaelis Lunchtime Lecture, ‘Always Looking’: Towards a Collective Inheritance of slavery in South Africa’ | Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, 1 October 2024.  

 

Invited presenter, Possible Histories and Blazing Forms, ‘In Plain Sight: Visuality and Enslavement’s Violence’ | Research Centre for Material Culture, Wereldmuseum Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 12-13 June 2024.                                                                     

 

Workshop Facilitator, National Arts Festival 2023: Meet Charter with Rucera Seethal and Sibongile Ndashe | Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, Makhanda, 1 July 2023.                                                                        

Invited presenter, Sighting Black Girlhood Programme, ‘Lesser Violence’ | LAPA, Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class, University of Johannesburg,  Johannesburg, 14 June 2023 

 

Presenter, Taking Care: Re | Creating Kinship in the Ethnographic Museum in Europe: Ancestors, 'Shadow Families' and Myth: Revisiting Cape Town’s First Slave-Owning Household | Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, the Netherlands, 2-4 November 2022.                                                                              

Presenter, Sex & Publics Conference, Interdisciplinary debates in Southern Africa: Considering the possibilities of a “lesser violence” – Lesser Violence: Volume 1 | Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, Johannesburg, 20-21 October 2022.                                                                               

Invited speaker, Cape Town Art Book Fair: Lesser Violence: Volume 1 in conversation with Sinazo Chiya | Norval Foundation, Cape Town, 28 August 2022.

                                                                                         

Chair, Listen to the Wheat online panel discussion in support of Laura Wilson’s programme of film screenings, with Laura Wilson, Zayaan Khan, Dr. Melanie Giles, and Robb Penn | POOL Space, 17 November 2021.

                                                                                         

Presenter, African Feminisms (Afems) 2019, Theorising from the Epicentres of our Agency: Following Angela van Bengale/Ansla van Bengalen/Maai Ansiela: an exploration of the legacies of the first enslaved women in contemporary Cape Town | University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 5 September 2019.

                                                                                         

Invited speaker, Centre for Extra-Mural Studies extension lecture: Following Ansla van Bengalen: Revisiting the histories of enslaved women in the Cape | University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 17 July 2019.

                                                                                         

Presenter, African Studies Association of the United Kingdom Conference 2018 Memory, multiplicity and participatory curation at the District Six Museum, Cape Town | University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, September 2018.

                                                                                         

Presenter, Inhabiting the Frame Symposium: Ebony, Beauty and reclaiming Africa | University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, November 2017.

                                                                                         

Facilitator, Lesser Violence panel discussion | VIAD, University of Johannesburg, August 2017.

                                                                                         

Organiser and facilitator, Great Talks: The Artist’s publication – New and Independent Press in Cape Town | Greatmore Studios, Cape Town, 4 May 2017
With guests Ilze Wolff, Kopano Maroga and Julia de Rosenworth, Sinazo Chiya and Raees Saiet

                                                                                         

Invited speaker, Reading the Black Library series | Stony Island Arts Bank, Rebuild Foundation, Chicago, USA, 2 August, 2016.

                                                                                         

Presenter, ART TALKS: ACTIVISM hosted by School of the Art Institute of Chicago student group Artists Known As (AKA), 30 October, 2015.

                                                                                         

Invited participant, ‘Ways of Knowing’ panel at the Reframing Visibility Symposium | School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 9 October, 2015.

                                                                                         

Chair, Unstitching Rex Trueform with Dr Siona O’Connell and Ilze Wolff | The Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, September 2012.