Rehema Chachage

b.1987, Dar es Salaam

Rehema Chachage is a visual artist whose practice can be viewed as a performative archive which untraditionally collects stories, rituals and other oral traditions in different media (performance, photography, video, text as well as physical installations); which traces hi/stories directly tied to (and connecting with) her matrilineage; and, which utilizes methodologies which are both embodied and instinctual, employing written texts, oral and aural stories, melodies, and relics from several re-enacted/performed rituals as source of research.

She has a BA in Fine Art (2009) from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town; and an MA Contemporary Art Theory (2018) from Goldsmiths, University of London. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in practice with the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna where her research explores alternative ways of knowing/knowledge formation, specifically engaging with handed down/inherited knowledges (songs, names, recipes, building practices, healing rituals, scientific knowledge, etc) as alternative epistemological strategies for rethinking conventional understanding and relationship to knowledge; and in the process, also arguing/ legitimising them as knowledges worthy of ‘mainstream’ spaces such as educational, as well as art institutions.