Heard Museum Presents Solo Show of Contemporary Artist Raven Chacon – Opens July 5
Raven Chacon, Still Life, #3, 2015 (detail). Sound and light installation with text. Voice and translation by Melvatha Chee. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy of John Kuczala
Published June 10, 2019
Exploring Indigenous culture through Light and Sound installation
PHOENIX — The Heard Museum announces the opening of, Still Life No. 3: Raven Chacon, a solo exhibition of the renowned contemporary artist. The exhibition opens July 5th and will run through November 3rd, 2019.
Still Life No. 3, curated by Heard Museum Fine Arts Curator Erin Joyce, tells the story of Diné Bahaneʼ, a Navajo story of creation and emergence into the current world. The exhibition is comprised of sound, speakers, text and timed lights, that scroll through several hues over an eight-hour cycle – relating to not only the colors of light throughout the day, but worlds of emergence. Using programmed audio and delay systems, the voice of Melvatha Chee (Diné) is amplified through the speakers, causing parts of the story to overlap, telling the story in a non-linear form to illuminate the past, present and future, all in one singular moment. This in turn situates the piece within a framework of a continuum of culture.
“As part of the Museum’s increased commitment to showing the work of contemporary artists, Raven’s work is a natural fit” said Joyce. “His work is thought provoking, complex and disrupts preconceived notions of what contemporary Indigenous art from North America looks like and engages with conceptually.”
Chacon (Diné) was born in Fort Defiance on the Navajo Nation and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a solo artist, collaborator or as a former member of Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney and The Kennedy Center. Chacon has received several awards including the United States Artists fellowship in music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. Chacon is currently based in both Albuquerque and Toronto, Ontario.
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Heard Museum will host a First Friday event on July 5 with a special live performance by Tohono O’odham Nation band, The Guardians, with free general admission to the museums’ galleries from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. For more information about, Still Life No. 3: Raven Chacon visit Heard.org. To learn more about First Friday, click here.
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