Exhibitions
Somalia bursts onto the Venice Biennale scene with SADDEXLEEY: poetry, memory and matter in three acts
In 2026, the Venice Biennale opens a new chapter in its history with the inaugural participation of the Federal Republic of Somalia. For the first time, the country will have its own National Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition, open to the public from May 9 to November 22 at the Palazzo Caboto in Venice.
This debut is not merely an institutional presence: it is a poetic statement. Entitled SADDEXLEEY (sa-DEH-ley) , the pavilion takes its name from a Somali poetic form based on triadic composition. Derived from saddex —meaning “three”—the concept articulates a generative logic where meaning emerges through repetition, variation, and relationship.
In dialogue with the curatorial theme In Minor Keys , conceived by Koyo Kouoh, the project transforms the exhibition space into a living poem. Spread across three floors, the pavilion unfolds like a rhythmic structure: three artists, three registers, three forms of relationship. Word, sound, and matter converge in a sensory experience that oscillates between fragility and resilience, proposing belonging not as an affirmation, but as a feeling.
The protagonists of this project are three key voices of the contemporary Somali diaspora: Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jama, and Warsan Shire. Through diverse disciplines, their practices explore memory, heritage, and the ways in which these are embodied and transmitted.
Ayan Farah works with textiles and sediments as sensitive archives of time, allowing the materials to contain that which escapes language. Asmaa Jama, for her part, moves between film, performance, and archive to question how cultural heritage is documented and reactivated in space. At the center of this constellation, Warsan Shire's poetry gives voice to the experience of displacement and intimacy, transforming language into both witness and archive.
Rather than narrating memory, SADDEXLEEY makes it tangible. In this pavilion, poetry is presented not as content, but as structure: a spatial methodology that organizes the visitor's perception and experience. This approach, developed by curators Mohamed Mire and Fabio Scrivanti, is rooted in Somali oral tradition, where poetry has historically functioned as social architecture and lived philosophy.
The pavilion's location reinforces this logic of intersections. Situated in the Palazzo Caboto, between the Giardini and the Arsenale, the space lies at the crossroads of three streets—Riva degli Schiavoni, Riva dei Sette Martiri, and Via Garibaldi—symbolically replicating the triadic structure that defines the entire project.
Commissioned by Abdirahman Yusuf Mohamud, cultural advisor under the mandate of the Office of the Prime Minister of Somalia, the pavilion is the result of an institutional collaboration involving the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was further supported by the Galerie Nordenhake and Galerie Kadel Willborn galleries, along with private contributions.
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