Sitaara Stodel

Sitaara Stodel (b.1991) is a Cape Town-based contemporary artist whose practice spans photography, collage, video, and printmaking. Her unique artistic perspective is deeply influenced by a lifetime of frequent relocations, having moved house forty times. This transient lifestyle profoundly shapes her work, where she often reconstructs personal and collective memories through found family photographs sourced from antique stores and markets.

Stodel's pieces are marked by her meticulous process of tearing, cutting, and reassembling these photographs, often using gold thread to symbolize the preciousness of memory. Her collages depict domestic scenes, integrating her ideals of home—complete with fresh flowers, framed artworks, houses with sea views, and shiny cars.

After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2014, Stodel received the prestigious Tierney Fellowship. She has since exhibited her work in numerous Cape Town galleries, including Zeitz MOCAA, SMAC Gallery, Smith Gallery, Gallery MOMO, and Everard Read. Stodel also contributes to the Michaelis photographic department as the technical officer of photography, utilizing her extensive knowledge of analogue photographic methods to influence her varied approaches to image-making