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Raven Chacon

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Raven Chacon

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marina.wills.smithson
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Raven Chacon

Raven Chacon (born 1977) is a Diné composer,


musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona Raven Chacon
within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first
Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for
his Voiceless Mass in 2022.

He has also been a solo performer of noise music and


worked with groups such as Postcommodity.[1]

Life and career


Raven Chacon was born in 1977 in Fort Defiance,
Arizona, US within the Navajo Nation.[2] He attended
the University of New Mexico, where he obtained his
BA in Fine Arts in 2001, then received an MFA in Chacon speaking at Columbia University in
music composition from the California Institute of the 2022
Arts.[3] He was a student of James Tenney, Morton Born 1977 (age 46–47)
Subotnick, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith and Fort Defiance, Arizona, United
Christopher Shultis. States
Education California Institute of the Arts
Chacon's visual and sonic artwork has been exhibited University of New Mexico
widely in the U.S. and abroad.[4] His room-sized sound
Known for sound art, non-vocal
and text installation, Still Life, #3 (2015), was
instrumentalist, installation art,
exhibited in the Transformer: Native Art in Light and
composer, musician, visual artist
Sound exhibition at the National Museum of the
American Indian, New York.[5][6] His collective and Style noise music, experimental sound,
solo work has been presented at Sydney Biennale,[7] composer, musician, visual artist
Kennedy Center, the Whitney Biennial,[8] documenta Awards MacArthur Fellowship 2023
14,[9] Adelaide International, Vancouver Art Gallery, Pulitzer Prize 2022
ASU Art Museum, Musée d'art contemporain de
Montréal, the San Francisco Electronic Music Website spiderwebsinthesky.com (http://spi
Festival,[10] the Heard Museum,[11] Chaco Canyon, derwebsinthesky.com)
and Performance Today.[12]

Chacon also performs in the groups KILT with Bob Bellerue, Mesa Ritual with William Fowler Collins,
Endlings with John Dieterich, and collaborations with Laura Ortman. In 2016, he was commissioned by
Kronos Quartet to compose a work for their Fifty For The Future project.[13]

Chacon serves as Composer-in-Residence with the Native American Composers Apprenticeship


Project.[14] In 2012, he was awarded a Creative Capital[15] Visual Arts grant. In 2014, he was honored
with a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in Music.[16] In 2018, Chacon was
awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin.[17]

In 2022, Chacon became the first Native American to win the


Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his composition
Voiceless Mass.[18]

Postcommodity
Chacon was a member of the Native American art collective,
Postcommodity, with whom he has developed multimedia
installations which have been exhibited internationally.[8] Other
members include Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist, Steven Still Life #3, detail of sound
Yazzie and Nathan Young.[8] In 2017, as part of Postcommodity, installation at the National Museum
Chacon created the multimedia project, ...in memoriam, in of the American Indian
Edmonton in 2017, curated by Ociciwan Contemporary Art
Collective.[19]

Personal life
Chacon lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is married to Candice Hopkins, a Tagish curator. His
sister Nani Chacon is a muralist.

Awards and honors


Chacon has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for
Music, an American Academy in Berlin Prize (music composition), a Creative Capital award (visual arts),
a United States Artists fellowship (music), a Joan Mitchell Foundation fellowship,[17] a Native Arts and
Cultures Foundation artist fellowship,[20] among others.[4] Chacon received the inaugural Mellon
Foundation Artist-in-Residence fellowship for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado
College.[21] In October 2023, Chacon was named a MacArthur Fellow.[22]

Partial discography
Inhale/Exhale (w/ Carlos Santistevan and Tatsuya Nakatani) (Other Minds Records, 2022)
An Anthology of Chants Operations (Ouidah, 2020)
Horse Notations (Cimiotti Recordings, 2020)
Crisalide Fossile (w/ OvO) (Bronson, 2016)
Your New Age Dream Contains More Blood Than You Can Imagine 12"LP (w/
Postcommodity) (Anarchymoon, 2011)
Kitchen Sorcery (w/ Bob Bellerue) (Prison Tatt Records, 2011)
At the Point Where the Rivers Crossed, We Drew Our Knives 12"LP (Anarchymoon, 2010)
Black Streaked Hum (Lightning Speak/Featherspines, 2009)
Overheard Songs (Innova, 2006)
The Incredible 17000 km Split (split w/ Torturing Nurse) (8K Mob, 2006)
Jesus Was a Wino (w/ Jeff Gburek) (Herbal Records, 2005)
Still/life (Sicksicksick, 2004)
Meet the Beatless (Sicksicksick, 2003)

Publications
For Zitkála-Šá Toronto: Art Metropole.ISBN 9781989010167 Los Angeles: New
Documents;ISBN 9781953441096. 2022.
OEI #98-99: Aural Poetics Stockholm: OEI. 2023.

References
1. Porter, Clayton (August 2016). "Studio Visit: Raven Chacon" (https://southwestcontemporar
y.com/raven-chacon/). Southwest Contemporary. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
2. "Raven Chacon" (https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/raven-chacon/).
Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Retrieved November 28, 2022.
3. "Raven Chacon Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, AZ" (https://creative-capital.org/artists/postco
mmodity/raven-chacon/). Creative Capital. Retrieved October 3, 2020.
4. "Still Life No. 3: Raven Chacon" (https://heard.org/exhibits/still-life-no-3-raven-chacon/).
Heard Museum. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
5. "Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound" (https://americanindian.si.edu/explore/exhibitio
ns/item?id=960). Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Retrieved
October 2, 2020.
6. Ash-Milby, Kathleen (Fall 2017). "Art that Moves" (https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/
story/art-moves). American Indian. 18 (3). Retrieved October 2, 2020.
7. "Top 5 Videos Celebrating the 2012 Sydney Biennale | BLOUIN ARTINFO" (https://web.arch
ive.org/web/20140318092459/http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/823194/top-5-videos-
celebrating-the-2012-sydney-biennale). Archived from the original (http://www.blouinartinfo.c
om/news/story/823194/top-5-videos-celebrating-the-2012-sydney-biennale) on March 18,
2014.
8. "Postcommodity" (https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/artist-in-residence/postcommodity).
Princeton University Art Museum. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
9. "Postcommodity" (https://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/13562/postcommodity).
documenta 14. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
10. "Raven Chacon" (http://www.sfemf.org/artists/raven-chacon/). San Francisco Electronic
Music Festival. Retrieved October 3, 2020.
11. Timble, Lynn (June 26, 2019). "Raven Chacon Returns to Phoenix, Explores Navajo
Creation Story at the Heard" (https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/conversation-navajo-ar
tist-raven-chacon-heard-museum-phoenix-11316751). Phoenix New Times. Retrieved
October 2, 2020.
12. "Performance Today" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100705165619/http://performancetoda
y.publicradio.org/features/2010/music_that_matters/composing_on_the_reservation.shtml).
Archived from the original (http://performancetoday.publicradio.org/features/2010/music_that
_matters/composing_on_the_reservation.shtml) on July 5, 2010.
13. "Kronos Quartet" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160204070104/http://kronosquartet.org/fifty
-for-the-future/composers/raven-chacon). Archived from the original (http://www.kronosquart
et.org/fifty-for-the-future/composers/raven-chacon) on February 4, 2016.
14. Wein, Gail (April 8, 2009). "Native American Composers" (https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/na
tive-american-composers/). newmusicusa.org. NewMusicBox. Retrieved January 30, 2022.
15. "Creative Capital" (https://web.archive.org/web/20120115031420/http://creative-capital.org/g
rantees/view/602/project:718). Archived from the original (http://creative-capital.org/grantee
s/view/602/project:718) on January 15, 2012.
16. "Raven Chacon | Native Arts and Cultures Foundation" (https://web.archive.org/web/201404
15063106/http://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/individual/2014/raven-chacon). Archived
from the original (http://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/individual/2014/raven-chacon) on
April 15, 2014. Retrieved May 12, 2014. Raven Chacon (Navajo) 2014 NACF Music Fellow
17. "Raven Chacon: INGA MAREN OTTO FELLOW IN MUSIC COMPOSITION - CLASS OF
SPRING 2018" (https://www.americanacademy.de/person/raven-chacon/). American
Academy in Berlin. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
18. Huizenga, Tom (May 10, 2022). "Meet Raven Chacon, the first Native American to win the
Pulitzer Prize for music" (https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2022/05/10/10977
60129/raven-chacon-pulitzer-prize-music). NPR.
19. Postcommodity, Alex Waterman and Ociciwan: "in memoriam..." (https://www.uhbooks.direct
ory/2017/06/21/in-memoriam-postcommodity-alex-waterman-and-ociciwan/). uh books.
2017. Retrieved March 10, 2018
20. "Raven Chacon" (https://www.nativeartsandcultures.org/raven-chacon). Native Arts and
Culture Foundation. November 7, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2020.
21. "Raven Chacon, Lightning Speak" (https://fac.coloradocollege.edu/exhibits/raven-chacon/).
Colorado College. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
22. "MacArthur Fellows - MacArthur Foundation" (https://www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/).
www.macfound.org. Retrieved October 5, 2023.

External links
Official website (http://www.spiderwebsinthesky.com/)
Fellow Spotlight: Raven Chacon (https://www.americanacademy.de/videoaudio/fellow-spotli
ght-raven-chacon/) at the American Academy in Berlin
2022 Pulitzer Prizes (https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2022)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raven_Chacon&oldid=1248887406"

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