The Visual Culture of Algeria Through Exchange, Circulation, and Global Networks

This graduate student colloquium is organised by Ava Hess (Art History), Yubai Shi (Art History), and Sarp Tanridag (Architecture and Urban Design). 

A central aim of the colloquium is to rethink dominant narratives of Algerian (and broader Maghribi) modernism. The growing interest in Algerian modern art and architecture often remains limited by national or colonial temporal frameworks. While colonial histories remain central to understanding nineteenth- and twentieth-century Algeria, recent scholarship reminds us that colonialism alone cannot account for the complexity of North African cultural production. Here, we will investigate the circulations and exchanges that have shaped artistic practice and visual culture across beylical, colonial, post-independence, and contemporary periods, while also attending to practices and media that have been marginalized in standard accounts of modernism.

Program:

9:00–9:15AM – Welcome and opening remarks

9:15–10:35AM – Panel I: Transregional Circulation
Moderated by Prof. Susan Slyomovics (University of California, Los Angeles)
Fadila Yahou (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), A Decolonial Avant-garde? Franco-American Artistic Networks and the Marginalization of Algerian Modernism, 1960-1961 

Nadia Makhoukh (Salah Boubnider University - Constantine 3), Mapping the mediterranean: transregional imaginaries in the wall paintings of Ahmed Bey's palace

Abdelkrim Boukachabia (University of Geneva), The nexus between art and deportation in the colonial era and its political implications in independent Algeria

10:45–11:00AM – Coffee break

11:00–12:30PM – Panel II: Signs and Symbols
Moderated by Yubai Shi (University of California, Los Angeles)

Bilal Akkouche (Tate Modern), Broken Threads, New Signs: Mohammed Khadda and the Making of a Postcolonial Aesthetic in Algeria

Zino Adjroud (University of Pennsylvania), Aouchem’s Mark on Maghrebi Modernism: A Trimedial Expression

Alexander Reindl (Universität Heidelberg), Ḏū l-Faqār: Folklore and Religion in Promotion of Socialism in Colonial Algeria, 1913–1914 

12:30-1:30PM – Lunch break

1:30–2:50PM – Panel III: Archives Revisited 
Moderated by Prof. Saloni Mathur (University of California, Los Angeles)

Ryan Schaller (University of California, Los Angeles), From Harem to Horizon: Algerian Postcards in the Twenty-First Century 

Jade Saber (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art), Performative Sound Investigation as an Alternative Archival Practice in Yasmina Reggad’s work 

Sabrina Amrane (University of California, Berkeley), The Visual Imperative of Algerian Arabic Poetry: From Amīr ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jazā’irī to Rashid Qurayshi 

3:00–3:30PM – Closing discussion