Draft:Rafram Chaddad

Rafram Chaddad (born June 26, 1976), is a Tunisian visual artist, food researcher and a writer. He lives and works in Tunis, Tunisia.

Biography

Rafram Chaddad was born in 1976 in Djerba Island in Tunisia. He was raised in Jerusalem, and graduated from the Musrara school of photography and new media. In 2010, while working on a photography project in Libya, Rafram was kidnapped by the secret police and spent six months in solitary confinement in the notorious prison Abu Slim, in Tripoli. His book about this affair was published in 2013. Chaddad is currently based in Tunisia.

Themes

Chaddad is a multidisciplinary artist, often working with sculpture, installation, and video. He is a storyteller, and draws from stories that are biographical in nature, often from his own family history. Chaddad approaches these stories from a manual and tactile angle. Food and traditional craftsmanship are tools at his disposal to tell a tangible truth that can never be too far removed from the viewer. With his works, Chaddad aims to stop life and show it – to revel in the day-to-day sensory experiences of eating, creating, living in a certain location and culture. Chaddad works in the mode of relational aesthetics; he seeks audience interaction, and in his work hopes to spark conversation around questions of belonging and identity

Career

Chaddad’s work has been exhibited internationally, at venues such as Jaou Festival, Kram; Kunst im Tunnel, Dusseldorf; Herzliya Museum, Herzliya; Kayu Lucie Fontaine Gallery, Bali and Lucie Fontaine Milan; Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Tel Aviv; Halle 14, Leipzig; and Zalatimo, Jerusalem. Chaddad has exhibited solo at the B7L9 in Tunis, Mucem Museum in Marseilles and Maximilian Forum / Platform Munich. He has received grants from the Kamal Lazaar Foundation, Halle 14, Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation, and received the Bronner stipend from the Goethe Institute. Chaddad completed a residency with Artport in 2012.