Raven Chacon (Diné) honors matriarchal Indigenous resistance at the Harwood Museum in a unique grouping of visual, video, and sound works that will be shown in New Mexico for the first time.
TAOS, NM—In 2016, while taking part in the No Dakota Access Pipeline resistance at Standing Rock, multidisciplinary artist Raven Chacon (Diné) captured a field recording of a silent protest. When Chacon’s audio document is exhibited in a museum or gallery setting, the piece is presented as-is—with no visual elements. “But it’s so powerful,” says Harwood Museum of Art curator Nicole Dial-Kay.
“It’s largely a silent piece, but you can feel the weight of the bodies,” says Dial-Kay. “You can feel what it’s like when people resist.” Hundreds of Indigenous women water protectors led the demonstration at the Oceti Sakowin camp near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
Silent Choir (Standing Rock) (2016-17) is the first work in the Harwood Museum of Art exhibition Raven Chacon: Three Songs, which opens on Friday at the 101-year-old Taos institution. The show—which is scheduled to be on view from February 23 through July 7, 2024, and features a unique set of live musical performances meant to model DIY basement shows—includes two other pieces that Chacon, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Foundation recipient, says celebrate Indigenous women and Native resistance.
“Myself coming from a matriarchal tribe and worldview, I was making all of these pieces around the same time to think about that worldview, lineage, and respect of matriarchal leadership,” Chacon explains. “That’s what ties [them] together.”
For Zitkála-Šá (2018) is the second work in the exhibition. It includes twelve lithographs (or musical movements, as Chacon views the artworks) dedicated to Native American, Mestiza, and First Nations women.
“Each of the compositions is quite conceptual, but in some way, it’s a portrait of the person,” says Dial-Kay about the featured women, ranging from Raven’s sister Autumn Chacon (Diné, Xicana) to Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), Joy Harjo (Muscogee [Creek] Nation), and Mexico City-based artist Carmina Escobar. “It’s also a musical composition to be read so each one comes with a set of instructions.”
The final piece, the video and sound installation Three Songs (2021), shows three concurrent projections of three Indigenous women. Each visits a site of past trauma for their respective tribes while playing a snare drum and singing newly composed songs in their Indigenous language about distressing incidences.
Sage Bond (Diné) sings about the Navajo Long Walk at the Peabody Kayenta Mine in the northern part of the Navajo Nation; Jehnean Washington (Yuchi) sings about the Trail of Tears at the encroached Arkansas River site of a hydroelectric dam, which speaks to drownings that occurred during the forced migration; and Mary Ann Emarthle (Seminole) sings about the relocation and separation of the Seminole people before the tribe came back together on the Seminole Reservation in Florida.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate to sing the songs with traditional drums, so they’re using the snare drum to take on that burden,” Chacon explains. “In the video, you can see that each of the drumsticks is beaded and there’s also a design on the drum that’s been drawn with symbols” that include a mountain, waves, and rays that represent sunlight.
The pieces that comprise Chacon’s exhibition were previously mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City during the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It’s Kept, and, save for Silent Choir, in the exhibition While hissing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in 2023-24. Perhaps unlike the Whitney Biennial, Chacon’s Harwood exhibition will hopefully allow for quiet reflection time, particularly while absorbing Silent Choir, which may have been inaudible for anyone attending the crowded and noisy affair at the Whitney.
The Harwood’s concert series For Zitkála-Šá corresponds with the exhibition’s run and includes scheduled performances by Kona Mirabel + Masa Rain Mirabel (February 24), Autumn Chacon (April 6), Laura Ortman (May 4), and Marisa DeMarco (June 7). The performance area, which has been painted black, will be in the middle of the exhibition space, with the idea of presenting the music and sound art in an intimate environment instead of the vibe of a stuffy auditorium. Chacon’s book For Zitkála-Šá, which collects the artist’s graphic scores, will be available for purchase at the museum.
Dial-Kay says she’s thrilled to present these works in New Mexico, especially considering that they have only been exhibited in New York and Arizona.
“Raven doesn’t create a lot of visual work like this, and a lot of people in New Mexico likely haven’t seen these works, which have such a strong tie-in to the region,” says Dial-Kay.
Raven Chacon: Three Songs opens on Friday, February 23, with a public reception from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos.
Disclosure: the author of this story has collaborated musically and played shows with Chacon.
