Invitation to the Defense of Rehema Chachage

The Examination Panel is made up of: Janine Jembere (chair), Anette Baldauf and  Renate Lorenz (supervisors), and Simon Gikandi (external appraiser, Princeton University).

Abstract

“Yee Kididi Kiziha” is a Chasu phrase derived from a Christian Hymnal, famous in my grandmother’s household whenever the family gathers. In English, the phrase loosely translates as “it is indeed pleasing” (to see people/family gather). Family and togetherness are central to this dissertation, which explores these themes through the lens of my grandmother, Bibi Mkunde’s, baking and weaving practices. The dissertation focuses on four main theoretical areas. It delves into alternative and non-canonized knowledge forms, emphasizing community-centered and generated knowledge. It also examines how togetherness and community building function as means of survival; it explores forms of subversion and refusal that emerge from mundane and the everyday; and explores the idea of continuity through citation, naming, and renaming— arguing citation as a means of repair, re-membering, and more importantly refusing erasure. 

By centering on these everyday practices of weaving and baking, this dissertation highlights how ordinary acts can become powerful forms of resistance and survival, helping us to cope with the persistent shadows of colonial history and personal grief. It navigates the complex intersections of decolonial practice, communal togetherness, and the reclamation of narratives that transcend pain and suffering. Through a performative writing process, the dissertation seeks alternative avenues for healing, emphasizing the significance of continuity in voices and lineages. Ultimately, this project is an ode to the enduring legacy of the women in my matriline, whose lives and practices have profoundly shaped my understanding of the world. It serves as a platform to honor matriarchal knowledge, extending an open invitation and offering multiple ways for navigating in collectivity and multiplicity.

Short biography

Rehema Chachage has a research-based, process-oriented, and community-centered art practice that extends to her mother and grandmother, who play integral roles as both interlocutors and collaborators. Together, they create a “performative archive” which “collects” and “organizes” stories, practices, rituals and other oral traditions in non-traditional ways, and in different media such as performance, photography, olfactory elements, video, essays, text, and physical installations. This archive traces histories directly tied to (and connecting with) her matrilineage, employing methodologies that involve storytelling, tracing the matriline, working with alternative ways of knowing and doing, as well as other approaches that are both embodied and instinctual. Drawing on written texts, oral and aural stories, melodies, and relics from several re-enacted and performed rituals as sources of research, their collaborations have also explored the unearthing of history, space, and the body (how the body and the land remember), as well as the mundane and everyday practices of surviving, resisting, subverting, and refusing erasure. 

Their collaborations have been exhibited extensively in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Chachage was shortlisted for the Henrike Grohs Art Award 2020, the Vordemberge-Gildewart Award 2022, and the Belvedere Art Award 2024. Additionally, she is one of the recipients of the LIVE WORKS Performance Act Award 2019 and received the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance in 2023. She holds a BA in Fine Art (2009) from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory (2018) from Goldsmiths, University of London.

The thesis defense will be in English and will take place at the Academy at Schillerplatz, Tower 2, room DG06.

We are looking forward to welcoming you.