Rafram Chaddad
Artist, photographer and author
Born on Djerba, an island off the coast of southern Tunisia, Rafram Chaddad (b. 1976) is an artist whose photographs, films, and multi-media installations to rethink the archive, migration narratives, and what it means to belong. His work makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
Since 2019, he has been conducting research for Leftovers, an upcoming book investigating how food practices in cities formerly occupied by the Ottoman Empire are inter-connected. The book highlights recipes particular to each place and oral histories around food-making that challenge the nationalization of food and encourage us to approach food as a shared experience.
Working between Tunis and New York, Rafram’s work reflects on his personal life experiences and comments on broader socio-political issues including migration and displacement, identity and belonging.
Over the past twenty years, he’s created dozens of short films and installations, which have exhibited worldwide in cultural institutions, galleries, and museums, including: Kunst im Tunnel, Dusseldorf; Kunstraum, New York; Kayu Lucie Fontaine Gallery, Bali; Lucie Fontaine, Milan; ArteEast foundation, New York; Halle 14, Leipzig; and Zalatimo, east Jerusalem. Chaddad has held solo shows at the Mucem Museum in Marseilles and the Maximilian Forum in Munich, among others.
Appears in
Podcasts
Brik with Rafram Chaddad
In this episode of the Kitchen Radio podcast, Rafram Chaddad dispatches live from La Goulette, Tunis with a rapid-fire making of “Brik,” a Jewish specialty that became a favorite regional street food. Rafram documents his domestic life and Tunisian-Jewish presence, family history and culture through food, stories and public art installations. Learn more and listen now!
Kitchen Radio Guests
The Kitchen Radio podcast brings listeners to the table of communities from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for intergenerational stories of community life and ritual practices from guests who are part of a rising renaissance of creative food projects exploring their oft-overlooked Jewish history and heritage.
In each episode, hosts Regine Basha (Founder of Tuning Baghdad) and Nathalie Basha (The Travel Muse), will feature a specific dish and a conversation to introduce the still little-known Jewish culture of the MENA region and re-seed Jewish life into a cultural space where their contribution was forgotten, rendered invisible or white-washed. Guests include: Tannaz Sassooni, Sephardic Spice Girls, Rafram Chaddad, Claudia Roden.