Sawiro is the Somali term for photographs, a loanword from Arabic ﺗَﺼﻮِﻳﺮ. The ongoing curatorial research project Studio Sawiro interrogates the decline of photography studios in Somalia through multiple departures, including the region’s historical encounter with photography. Tracing discarded, displaced, and destroyed Somali photography studios following the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991, alongside Somalia’s material entanglement in histories of ‘colonial epistemicide’, the project focuses on historical Somali photography collections along with those produced in contemporary and vernacular settings. Presented in three acts, SITAAD’s presentation will conclude with a screening of Oral History Letter I: on the photographic cultures of Mogadiscio, a 8-minute video that features a conversation between a Somali mother and her Somali-Italian daughter, exploring the matrilineal transmission of photographic knowledge.

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 archivist duo facilitate interventions within colonial sites, museums, and archives. Inhabiting the historical terrain of former Italian, French, and British Somaliland, SITAAD maintains a focus on experimentation with analogue formats and xirsi, a clandestine Somali practice of protection. Situating the Somali region as a contested zone shaped by colonial histories, linguistic multiplicities, and intersecting narratives, they propose an archival methodology that situates the Somali region within global histories.