Allow me to introduce myself and my art…

After going through a long phase of the so called ‘bloggers block’ and consulting my good friend Bahati about it, I decided (well, actually, Bahati advised me to) just make my first post on this blog an introduction of myself and my art.

So – Hi everyone! Habari? Mambo?

My name is Rehema Chachage, a new content author for Vijana FM and a New Media artist. The mediums that I use most in my work (and ones that I am most interested in) are Photography and Video (and Sound). I guess I can say that I am interested in performance as well because most of my work is pretty perfomative in nature. But I don’t do a lot of live perfomances as such; most of the performances are captured as photographic prints or videos which are then exhibited as works of art.


The most prominent theme that my work tries to explore is that of ‘alienation’: Being a stranger, the outsider, the other, alien and often voiceless. Inspired by the social alienation that I experienced in the four years that I spent as a cultural foreigner and a non-South African, black female student in what I considered to be a predominantly white middle class oriented institution.

I would like to show you some of the images from an exhibition that I had with Goethe Institute Tanzania throughout the whole month of March. This was my very first exhibition since graduation, an ensemble of works titled “Chipuza” which builds on a body of work (which I titled Haba na Haba)that I produced for my graduate exhibition at Michaelis School of Fine Arts in December 2009. Consisting of four digital photographs and three black and white videos. “Chipuza”, which translates in English as Germinate, tries to explore the theme of voice and rootedness.




For all those who are interested, I will be having another exhibition, showing completely new works this time round, with Alliance Francaise Tanzania (and maybe later on with Alliance Francaise Addis Ababa) which is a collaboration between myself and Henock Getachew, a mixed media artist from Ethiopia. I will post more details regarding the show once everything has been finalized.

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Rehema Chachage is a New Media artist based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She graduated in 2009 from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town where she received a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art degree. The most prominent theme that Chachage tries to explore in her works is that of ‘alienation’: being a stranger, the outsider, the other, alien and often voiceless, inspired by the social alienation she experienced in the four years she spent as a cultural ‘foreigner’ and a non South African, black female student in a predominantly white middle class oriented institution. Rehema is currently helping Vijana FM stimulate fellow East African artists who can collaborate on projects.

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