Projects
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Studio Sawiro:
Oral History Letter: Leyla's mother, Hawa S.
on the photographic cultures of Mogadiscio. © SITAAD Archive
Sawiro is the Somali name for photographs, a loanword of the arabic ﺗَﺼﻮِﻳﺮ. The ongoing artistic-research project Studio Sawiro aims to interrogate the decline of photography studios in Somalia.
Through photographic experimentation and archival research, the project seeks to trace and preserve endangered visual archives, fostering a dialogue on Somali cultural memory. The project will manifest in various chapters, beginning with a print publication and photographic research project. In 2027, SITAAD will organise a Study Day over two days in Italy for practitioners shaping and animating research on vernacular and studio photography practices in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
Chapter I:
Oral History Letter: Leyla's mother, Hawa S. on the photographic cultures of Mogadiscio
Single-channel digital video, colour, sound, 8 min
Watch here
Project outline
Tracing discarded, displaced, and destroyed Somali photography studios following the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991, alongside Somalia’s entanglement in histories of ‘colonial epistemicide’, Studio Saiwro’s curatorial framework departs from Fazil Moradi's reading of catastrophic art as works of spectral inheritance that interrupt rhetorical and legal registers, keeping the past infinitely open.
Somalia's encounter with the daguerreotype in the mid-nineteenth century, marks the first conjuncture in its photographic history. In his 1848 ‘Voyage à la Côte Orientale d’Afrique,’ Charles Guillain interweaves geography and ethnography by producing daguerreotype portraits to visualise his encounters with inhabitants along the East African coast of the Indian Ocean, including Somali ports Ras Hafun, home to the ancient proto-Somali city Opone, and Mogadishu. Following an 1847 survey of several cities in the Indian subcontinent, Guillain began his investigations of the Somali coast. According to Guillain, acts of refusal by his female Somali subjects who were unwilling to follow conventional portrait postures dictated by the photographer, disrupted the efficacy of the new visual technology. Their sudden movements exposed the polished copper plates to elevated temperature and particularly luminosity, impacting the final quality of the daguerreotypes.
Scholar Tina Campt notes that, ‘reassemblage in dispossession is a quotidian practice through which the dispossessed reconfigure their status as subjects within a field of limited and often compromised resources’. Using a Camptian grammar, SITAAD takes the refusal of Somali women in Guillain's daguerreotype as a point of departure. Studio Sawiro involves the curatorial team Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan (SITAAD), in collaboration with architectural researcher Jabir Mohamed. Organised in three thematic clusters, the project centres on participatory methodologies and the reimagining of archival practices. The project will engage collaborators and the public through experimental workshops, archival essays, architectural sketches, and oral histories. This approach not only preserves Somali photographic histories but also brings them to life for contemporary discourse, challenging colonial legacies and reframing memory production in the present.
Project team
SITAAD are joined by architectural researcher Jabir Mohamed, who is guiding the architectural focus of the project, by providing a framework for spatial and architectural tracing of former photographic studio sites in the Somali region.
Jabir Mohamed is an architectural researcher and conservationist focused on preserving at-risk built heritage in the Somali Peninsula. As the founder and director of the RAAD RAAC Foundation & Studio, he leads projects dedicated to restoring cultural sites affected by war, neglect, and climate change. His work integrates architectural research, community-driven restoration, and sustainable design practices. Currently, Mohamed is spearheading a project in collaboration with the Berbera Municipal Government, the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, and the Hargeisa Cultural Centre to restore a historic site in Berbera, including an 18th-century Ottoman mosque and British colonial residencies.
Transmigrating Cassettes is a sonic container for SITAAD research interventions on dispersed colonial collections which instrumentalises the audio cassette as an archival and discursive tool.
The project was first incubated in the United States through a fellowship undertaken by SITAAD with Soomaal House of Art, the University of Minnesota’s Liberal Arts Engagement Hub and the Immigration History Research Center in 2023. The project’s initial public programme was held at Soomaal House of Art, The Hub (Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, and the Africa Center in NYC.The project is now being incubated in Europe, and has been presented at Afterall, Tate and the Recovery Plan.
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© The Recovery Plan
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SITAAD Archive is a repository of Somali visual, literary, sonic and material cultures. The archive is often activated by SITAAD in public programme and exhibition settings to pluralise forms of research and study on Somali collections.
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Studio Sawiro
Studio Sawiro:
Oral History Letter: Leyla's mother, Hawa S.
on the photographic cultures of Mogadiscio. © SITAAD Archive
Sawiro is the Somali name for photographs, a loanword of the arabic ﺗَﺼﻮِﻳﺮ. The ongoing artistic-research project Studio Sawiro aims to interrogate the decline of photography studios in Somalia.
Oral History Letter: Leyla's mother, Hawa S. on the photographic cultures of Mogadiscio
Single-channel digital video, colour, sound, 8 min
Watch here
Project outline
Tracing discarded, displaced, and destroyed Somali photography studios following the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991, alongside Somalia’s entanglement in histories of ‘colonial epistemicide’, Studio Saiwro’s curatorial framework departs from Fazil Moradi's reading of catastrophic art as works of spectral inheritance that interrupt rhetorical and legal registers, keeping the past infinitely open.
Somalia's encounter with the daguerreotype in the mid-nineteenth century, marks the first conjuncture in its photographic history. In his 1848 ‘Voyage à la Côte Orientale d’Afrique,’ Charles Guillain interweaves geography and ethnography by producing daguerreotype portraits to visualise his encounters with inhabitants along the East African coast of the Indian Ocean, including Somali ports Ras Hafun, home to the ancient proto-Somali city Opone, and Mogadishu. Following an 1847 survey of several cities in the Indian subcontinent, Guillain began his investigations of the Somali coast. According to Guillain, acts of refusal by his female Somali subjects who were unwilling to follow conventional portrait postures dictated by the photographer, disrupted the efficacy of the new visual technology. Their sudden movements exposed the polished copper plates to elevated temperature and particularly luminosity, impacting the final quality of the daguerreotypes.
Scholar Tina Campt notes that, ‘reassemblage in dispossession is a quotidian practice through which the dispossessed reconfigure their status as subjects within a field of limited and often compromised resources’. Using a Camptian grammar, SITAAD takes the refusal of Somali women in Guillain's daguerreotype as a point of departure. Studio Sawiro involves the curatorial team Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan (SITAAD), in collaboration with architectural researcher Jabir Mohamed. Organised in three thematic clusters, the project centres on participatory methodologies and the reimagining of archival practices. The project will engage collaborators and the public through experimental workshops, archival essays, architectural sketches, and oral histories. This approach not only preserves Somali photographic histories but also brings them to life for contemporary discourse, challenging colonial legacies and reframing memory production in the present.
Project team
SITAAD are joined by architectural researcher Jabir Mohamed, who is guiding the architectural focus of the project, by providing a framework for spatial and architectural tracing of former photographic studio sites in the Somali region.
Jabir Mohamed is an architectural researcher and conservationist focused on preserving at-risk built heritage in the Somali Peninsula. As the founder and director of the RAAD RAAC Foundation & Studio, he leads projects dedicated to restoring cultural sites affected by war, neglect, and climate change. His work integrates architectural research, community-driven restoration, and sustainable design practices. Currently, Mohamed is spearheading a project in collaboration with the Berbera Municipal Government, the Commonwealth Heritage Forum, and the Hargeisa Cultural Centre to restore a historic site in Berbera, including an 18th-century Ottoman mosque and British colonial residencies.
Transmigrating Cassettes
Transmigrating Cassettes is a sonic container for SITAAD research interventions on dispersed colonial collections which instrumentalises the audio cassette as an archival and discursive tool.
The project was first incubated in the United States through a fellowship undertaken by SITAAD with Soomaal House of Art, the University of Minnesota’s Liberal Arts Engagement Hub and the Immigration History Research Center in 2023. The project’s initial public programme was held at Soomaal House of Art, The Hub (Liberal Arts Engagement Hub, and the Africa Center in NYC.The project is now being incubated in Europe, and has been presented at Afterall, Tate and the Recovery Plan.
© The Recovery Plan
Transmigrating Cassettes © SITAAD Archive
SITAAD Archive
SITAAD Archive is a repository of Somali visual, literary, sonic and material cultures. The archive is often activated by SITAAD in public programme and exhibition settings to pluralise forms of research and study on Somali collections.
Leyla Degan’s Archive 2022 © SITAAD Archive