Unlikely Witnesses to History

Show notes

Artist and researcher Rehema Chachage is in conversation with Jan Dammel about mixed-media installations in Johannesburg, Leipzig and Stade. They discuss Rehema’s long-term engagement with her matriline, how songs can serve as “unlikely witnesses to history”, and how the marigold speaks to both colonial uprooting of plants to Tanzania and intergenerational transmissions.

In Conversation With

Rehema Chachage

Rehema Chachage maintains a research- and process-based practice characterized by a diverse range of media and methods. Grounded in generational knowledge, and alternative modes of storytelling, remembering, and re-membering, her work integrates performance, photography, video, olfactory elements, voice, sound, text, and installation to produce immersive, multisensory experiences. 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.
Chachage holds 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, and she is a recipient of the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance (2023). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher on the FWF PEEK–funded project Harvest Rituals: A Call for Visitation at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Website
Instagram @rehemachachage

References

Installations, Exhibitions and Publications Mentioned

The sound installation Avoid/Devoid (2022) and the film installation The Journey (2022) by Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani are part of exhibition Berge Versetzen (in collaboration with artists collective Para) as part of the exhibition REINVENTING GRASSI.SKD which has been open to the public since March 2022 at GRASSI Museum Leipzig.

The installation Notes on Baking (A recipe for togetherness), 2022, fabric, text, scent, wood, and sound, was part of exhibition A Different Now Is Close Enough To Exhale On You, curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg.
Listen to the full sound installation and see photographs here.

Rehema Chachage reads two texts on the song Yee Kididi Kiziha. The first text, called Yee Kididi Kiziha (It is Indeed Pleasing). A performative transgenerational encounter with togetherness, can be found here. The second text, Further notes on the song ‘Yee Kididi Kiziha’, is part of Rehema Chachage’s dissertation Yee Kididi Kiziha (It is Indeed Pleasing), defended in June 2025 at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Announcement).

Installation Where the Ashes Rest, A Single Marigold Bloomed (2025), video, sound, image, soot, olfactory elements, woven and wooden objects, lights.

• Text and photos on website
• Installation including sound and video accessible via 3D tour

The exhibition AMANI. kukita | kung'oa. German and Tanzanian perspectives on a colonial collection in Stade (February 15 – June 9, 2025) was curated by Rehema Chachage, Sebastian Möllers, Antonia Schmidt and Lea Steinkamp at Schwedenspeicher & Kunsthaus, Museen Stade.

• Information
• Wiki on results of provenance research project between Museen Stade and National Institute for Medical Research, Amani Medical Research Center
• Multimedia 3D tours (English and German) of the entire exhibition

Trilingual exhibition catalogue: Chachage, Rehema / Sebastian Möllers / Antonia Schmidt / Lea Steinkampf (Ed.): AMANI kukita | kung'oa. Bönen: Kettler 2025. (de/en/sw)

The group exhibition Beyond Coolness. Gletscherschmelzen und darüber hinaus is on view at MaximiliansForum Munich until April 14, 2026. (info)

During colonial times, Amani Institute was a subordinate to the "Botanical Central Office for the German Colonies", a department to Botanical Garden Berlin (further information here).

Collaborating Writers and Artists Mentioned

Demere Kitunga
Jason Langheim (website)
Valerie Asiimwe Amani (website)

Credits

Sounds
Sound installation Avoid/Devoid (2022) by Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani Sound installation as part of Notes on Baking (2022). (Full-length version) Sound installation as part of Where the Ashes Rest, A Single Marigold Bloomed (2025) (Full-length version)

Visuals
Podcast Cover (Where the Ashes Rest, A Single Marigold Bloomed): © Museen Stade

Podcast Info
Curation and host for Season 5
Jan Dammel, Postdoctoral Researcher
Podcast Founder
Dr. Layla Zami, former Postdoctoral Researcher, FU Berlin
Producer
Freie Universität Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts
(SFB 1512 Intervenierende Künste, TP B05)
Funded by
German Research Society (DFG)
In Cooperation with
Eufoniker Audioproduktion
FU Berlin, SFB 1711 Affective Societies