Raven Chacon

b. 1977, Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation / based in Albuquerque, NM

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE SANTA FE, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the 2-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence.

A recording artist over the span of 24 years, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Since 2004, he has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022), and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.

His solo artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and various private collections.

Artist’s Website

Printed and Published by Tamarind

Raven Chacon, Tiguex, 2024 (24-327)
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Related Events

Tamarind Talks: Raven Chacon
Sunday, August 24, 2pm
Albuquerque Museum
Joined by author and University of New Mexico Professor of Musicology / Ethnomusicology Dr. Ana Alonso-Minutti
RSVP

Tamarind Open House

Saturday, August 30, 2–4pm

2500 Central Avenue SE

Join Tamarind staff, printers and artist Raven Chacon for print demos and tours of the gallery and workshop.

The Frederick Hammersley Artist Residency and its related programs are made possible through the generous support of the Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.