Born in
Dar es Salaam, Chachage comes from a family of academics and activists. She was born in
Dar es Salaam to the late professor Chachage Seithy Loth Chachage and his wife
Demere Kitunga as one of four children. Her father was an academic, political analyst and author. Her mother is an activist, a feminist writer, editor and publisher in Tanzania. Two of her siblings are also academics, Chambi Chachage, is a scholar of African studies at
Princeton University and political analyst. Her sister
Mkunde Chachage is a lecturer and researcher at
University of Dar es Salaam Mbeya College of Health and Allied Sciences (UDSM – MCHAS) and also a researcher at the
National Institute for Medical Research at Mbeya medical research centre (NIMR – MMRC). In 2009, Chachage graduated with a
Bachelor of Fine Arts from
Michaelis School of Fine Art of the
University of Cape Town,
South Africa. Further, she obtained a
Master of Arts in Contemporary Art Theory from
Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2018. Pursuing her PhD studies and as a lecturer at the
University of Applied Arts, Chachage currently lives in
Vienna,
Austria. Through
video art and sculptural installations, Chachage's work examines universal themes such as
identity, belonging and cultural transmission in patriarchal societies. Her work has included personal experiences, such as her relation to her deceased father, feeling uprooted in a strange country, and also African rituals and traditions of motherhood and
gender relations in male-dominated societies. In Chachage's video installation of 2010,
Kwa Baba Rithi Undugu (English:
To/From the father), objects representing antiquated transistor radios are arranged on the wall and positioned in a vertical array. In each radio there is a miniature video screen, which, when activated, displays a stationary figure while a vertical line scans across the figure in search of a suitable sound frequency. A man's voice can be heard intermittently, its transmission being periodically interrupted by extraneous noise. In her work with museums, Chachage has collaborated with African and German artists examining
Germany's colonial past and its meaning for the present both in Germany and Tanzania. Exhibiting her visual and multimedia artworks, she has participated in art shows in the U.S., South Africa,
Senegal, Germany,
Belgium, and
Japan, among others. In 2024, she participated in an event and publication organized by
Columbia University's Institute of African Studies. From 15 February to 9 June 2025, the historical and art museums in
Stade, Germany, are showing the exhibition ''AMANI kukita | kung'oa
(planted | uprooted''). This show presents shared German and Tanzanian perspectives on the historical collection by German botanist
Karl Braun. It is based on
provenience research going back to the work of scientists during German colonial times in the
Amani research station. Chachage and fellow Tanzanian artist Valerie Asiimwe Amani, as well as artist Yvette Kießling from Germany, created artworks relating to the collection and its natural setting in Tanzania. The accompanying catalogue was co-edited by Chachage. Apart from her artwork, Chachage has published about contemporary art in Tanzania. In her 2014 article for the cultural website Nafasi Art Space, she quoted a letter that Marina Galvani, then head curator of the
World Bank art program, had written to the
National Arts Council of Tanzania. Referring to artists having "a special role as social barometers, as promoters of change and as repository of tradition", Chachage discussed an emerging public interest and "cultural awakening" in the contemporary
culture of Tanzania. == Selected exhibitions ==