28/04/2026
Hybrid Graduate Student Colloquium:
"The Visual Culture of Algeria Through Exchange, Circulation, and Global Networks”
"الثقافة البصرية للجزائر عبر التبادل والتداول والشبكات العالمية"
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM (PST)
Location: Bunche Hall 10383, UCLA & Online (Zoom)
- Attend via Zoom (registration required):
https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SHm79ZA5S0Cx76WzKz3RHA
- In-person attendance (please RSVP):
https://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/event/17524
This one-day hybrid colloquium will bring together early-career scholars working on the visual culture of Algeria from the Ottoman period to the present. It focuses on the movement of artists, artworks, materials, and ideas across local, regional, and global networks, situating Algerian visual culture as a site of innovation, negotiation, and exchange. Rather than treat the French invasion of Algiers in 1830 as a definitive point of rupture, the colloquium invites contributions that emphasize continuities and transformations in artistic production over time, cutting across conventional precolonial/colonial/postcolonial divisions.
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
Related Document: CFP_Visual-Culture-Algeria_UCLA_2026-zb-isp.pdf :https://www.international.ucla.edu/media/files/CFP_Visual-Culture-Algeria_UCLA_2026-zb-isp.pdf
