Rehema Chachage
Rehema Chachage (b. 1987, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) maintains a research- and process-based practice characterized by a diverse range of media and methods. Grounded in generational knowledge, memory, and alternative modes of storytelling, her work integrates performance, photography, video, olfactory elements, voice, text, and installation to produce immersive, multisensory experiences that activate visual, auditory, and olfactory registers.
Central to her practice is an exploration of matrilineal family memory, developed in collaboration with her mother and grandmother. Together, they create a “performative archive” that weaves memory, stories, songs, rituals, and oral traditions into an ongoing, open-ended process—akin to an open weave—where the body functions simultaneously as site and medium of historical knowledge production. Through collective, polyphonic engagements, Chachage traces histories, spaces, and embodied narratives, proposing alternative methodologies for engaging with the past and refusing erasure through enactive, intergenerational continuity.
Chachage holds a BA in Fine Art (2009) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town; an MA in Contemporary Art Theory (2018) from Goldsmiths, University of London; and a PhD in Practice from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2025). Her work has been exhibited widely across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Now based between Tanzania and Austria, her recent projects reimagine building, homemaking, and belonging as iterative processes through which communities sustain relational infrastructures across distance.
Central to her practice is an exploration of matrilineal family memory, developed in collaboration with her mother and grandmother. Together, they create a “performative archive” that weaves memory, stories, songs, rituals, and oral traditions into an ongoing, open-ended process—akin to an open weave—where the body functions simultaneously as site and medium of historical knowledge production. Through collective, polyphonic engagements, Chachage traces histories, spaces, and embodied narratives, proposing alternative methodologies for engaging with the past and refusing erasure through enactive, intergenerational continuity.
Chachage holds a BA in Fine Art (2009) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town; an MA in Contemporary Art Theory (2018) from Goldsmiths, University of London; and a PhD in Practice from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2025). Her work has been exhibited widely across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Now based between Tanzania and Austria, her recent projects reimagine building, homemaking, and belonging as iterative processes through which communities sustain relational infrastructures across distance.