Art writer, researcher and PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of the Witwatersrand.

In her PhD research, Soudien is invested in the intersections of art, history and gender concerning histories of enslavement in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Her work explores how contemporary art, performance and the performing arts commemorate enslavement and enslaved women in the present. She is the editor of Lesser Violence: Volume 1 (2022), published by MaThoko's Books (an imprint of GALA Queer Archive), and has contributed to ArtThrob, ArtAFRICA, the Mail & Guardian, and Frieze, among others.

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

Soudien has been the recipient of a number of awards throughout her academic career, including the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Award in 2023 and 2015, the Canon Collins Sol Plaatje Scholarship in 2023, SAIC's MA in New Arts Journalism Class Prize in 2016, and at UCT was a Dean's List Honoree from 2010-2013. She was awarded a National Fellowship at the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), UCT, in 2016.

Selected work experience

Tutor and supervisor in the Fine Art Department at the University of the Witwatersrand (2022-present)

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

‘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)  →