Sophie Orlando
Sophie Orlando is and an author, a critical pedagogue and an Associate Professor of Art Theory at the Villa Arson Art school in Nice.
Her research focuses on the narratives of art within the context of European coloniality. She has authored British Black Art. Debates on Western Art History (Paris, Dis Voir, 2016) and edited a monograph on the artist Sonia Boyce, titled Thoughtful Disobedience (Les Presses du réel-Villa Arson, 2017). Between 2015 and 2018, as a researcher for the AHRC Black Artists and Modernism programme in London, she co-edited, alongside artist susan pui san lok and curator Nick Aikens, the symposium and subsequent digital book Conceptualism: Intersectional Readings, International Framings (Van Abbemuseum, 2019). Currently, she is completing an essay entitled ‘Crafting Narratives and Artistic Situations in Britain After 1979’, set to be published by PUV (Collection Esthétique hors cadre) in 2025.
Another aspect of her work examines biases and resources in the development of artistic knowledge. Her book, La Part Affective (Paraguay, 2024), intertwines a reflective history of art, critical pedagogy and a fictional narrative about the teaching of art theory. Les Fourmis Courent en Deux Sens/Ants Walk Two Ways (co-edited with artist Katrin Ströbel, Villa Arson-Archive Books, 2024) reflects on contexts, artistic processes and strategies since 2007–2008. Additionally, she serves as the scientific editor, alongside Alice Dusapin (editor), for Scratching the Surface, a series of books dedicated to critical pedagogies in art (Villa Arson-Sternberg Press). She is also currently working on an essay dedicated to the politics of the contemplative-somatic approaches in critical art pedagogies.
Bibliography
-Alex Martini Roe, To Become Two (2018)
-Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology (2016)
-Maïder Fortune and Annie MacDonnel, Communicating Vessels, 31’, 2020
-Lygia Clark Hélio Oiticica Letters, 1964–1974, (2024)
-Yael Davids, I will be your last teacher, (2023)