Connie Sjödin

Research Topic

Aouchem '67: Algerian Modernism and Third World Revolution

Connie Sjödin is a doctoral candidate in History of Art at the University of Oxford, where she previously studied French and North African Francophone literature. She is currently completing her dissertation, a microhistory of the Algerian art collective ‘Aouchem,’ which exhibited in various formations between 1967 and 1971. Challenging the narratives of ‘derivative’ or ‘belated’ modernism, Connie situates the group's art and manifesto within the political and intellectual context of the era, in dialogue with key North African and Arab thinkers. Through this transnational approach, she aims to highlight alternative and disrupted cultural imaginaries from the decolonising Third World. Connie teaches courses on Global Modernism(s) and Abstract Art at Oxford, and she was previously a Junior Teaching Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum. She was awarded the 2024 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art by AMCA for her article, ‘Baya in Vogue.’

Supervisor: Professor Alastair Wright