
Dr Amie LH 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 Art Institute of Chicago, the District Six Museum, blank projects, the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, the Wits School of Arts and GALA Queer Archive. 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 is a graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (BAFA, 2013), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) (MA, 2016), and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) (PhD, 2024).
Selected work experience
Lecturer, Art History and Discourse of Art, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (2024-)
Tutor and supervisor in the Fine Art Department at the University of the Witwatersrand (2022-2023)
Editor, Lesser Violence: Volume 1 (2022) at the GALA Queer Archive (2020-2022)
Researcher and curator at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg (2017-2020)
Selected published works
(Forthcoming) ‘Ansiela van Bengalen’ in Slavery Heritage Guide of the Cape (2025)
‘Alongside One Another: Myth-Making and Risk in Narrativising Enslavement at the Cape of Good Hope’ in Space of Care (2023) →
Lesser Violence: Volume 1 (2022) →
‘Landscapes of meaning’ in There are mechanisms in place: Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum Creative Book (2020) →