Press enquiries, invitations and collaborations:
info.sitaad@gmail.com
SITAAD is an archive-focused platform co-founded by Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan in 2022. Drawing on sitaad, a type of devotional gathering organised by Somali women, the platform facilitates artistic and curatorial research, publishing, and collaborative knowledge-making. Situating the Somali region as a contested zone shaped by colonial histories, linguistic multiplicities, and intersecting narratives, they enact an archival methodology that maps the region within a global terrain.
Degan and Hassan are Affiliate Researchers at the Soomaal House Library & Archives Center. Their long-term projects include Transmigrating Cassettes and Studio Sawiro, supported by Soomaal House of Art, the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, and the Goethe-Institut. Their work has been presented at the Tate, Africa Centre NYC, Afterall, The Recovery Plan Florence, Open Resource Centre, and beyond.
Leyla Degan is a Somali-Italian based artist and researcher based in Milan. She works across the borders of photography archives, visual arts and field research. She focuses her practice on colonial archives and restitution in relation to Somalia, with an emphasis on Somali women as the point of her research. In 2023 she was an artist-archivist in residence at the Black History Month in Florance at Numeroventi held by The Recovery Plan/YGBI. She later exhibited at the Acre Hub and in 2024 exhibited her works Habaryar and Intaan Noohalay as part of Curating Black Art in Italy at Soho House in Rome. She is a graduate of MA Photography Archiving and New Media at Bauer, Milan School of Design and Photography. Degan co-founded the archive-focused platform SITAAD in 2022.
Naima Hassan is a researcher, curator, and archivist based in Berlin. Her practice foregrounds alternative epistemologies, curatorial and archival ethics, with a focus on the epistemic transformation of postcolonial collections and memory cultures. She currently leads Re:assemblages, jointly developed with Guest Artists Space Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, as Associate Curator and Archivist. In 2022, she founded SITAAD, a platform dedicated to supporting archival research on Somalia and its diaspora. Hassan also serves on the Steering Board of TheMuseumsLab and is a member of New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures Working Group.
Logo design
Kaamil A. Haider
SITAAD’s logo is modelled on the letter S in the Kaddare writing system. The alphabet was invented in 1952 by Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare. It was officially recommended as the national script by the Somali Language Committee, a group of researchers and civil servants who standardized the Somali language. Subsequently, as a result of state economic restraints, the Latin alphabet was selected instead.