Nitakujengea kinyumba na vikuta vya kupitia [A Home for You I Will Create with Exit Pathways – A Gut Feeling] by Rehema Chachage
Performance and award ceremony: Fri, 01.09.2023, 7pm
Exhibition: Sat, 02.09. – Sat, 16.09.2023
Artist talk: Fri, 08.09.2023, 6 pm
What does it mean to feel at home in a place? Where does this “gut feeling”, this spontaneous resonance between self and environment, come from? What are the conditions under which a sense of belonging develops? In her performance project Nitakujengea kinyumba, na vikuta vya kupitia [A Home for You I will Create, with Exit Pathways – A Gut Feeling], this year’s H13 prize winner Rehema Chachage sets out to find answers.
Tracing the life paths of her matrilineage the artist scrutinizes the complexity and diversity of the phenomenon of feeling rooted. In so doing, she looks into the migration experiences of her female ancestors Nankondo, Bibi Mkunde, and Mama Demere as well as into current constellations of displacement, seclusion, and escape. The profoundly political fragility of this sensation and the performative exploration thereof lay at the core of the performance premiered during the award ceremony and the subsequent exhibition.
Kunstraum Niederoesterreich thereby becomes both stage and mental sounding board: with a meticulously designed ensemble of natural materials and organic architectural elements (with references to the artist’s country of origin, Tanzania) Chachage creates an associative place that holds multiple forms of collective memory – stories, songs, rituals. With her performance, Chachage intervenes in this structure and expands it to negotiate the role of the body – and its relationships to other bodies – in the creation of a sense of rootedness.
The performance was presented on the day of the award ceremony, on Fri, 01.09.2023 from 7pm at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich.
For the first time, the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance was awarded in partnership with an institution abroad: Bergen Kunsthall in Norway.
Rehema Chachage's artistic practice is characterized by a great diversity of media and methods. Visuality, sound, and smell combine in her performances and installations to create complex multisensual arrangements. The source and setting of Chachage's practice is her matrilinear family memory. Together with her mother and grandmother, Chachage has created an extensive "performative archive" that combines diverse forms of memory-stories, songs, rituals and oral traditions. A pivotal role is ascribed to the often-overlooked role of the body as a site and medium of historical knowledge production. Rehema Chachage studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently completing her PhD in Practice at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.