Raven Chacon: Scores for Coming Storms

RAVEN CHACON

SCORES FOR COMING STORMS 5.14–6.20.26

RAVEN CHACON

SCORES FOR COMING STORMS 5.14–6.20.26

Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer-Prize winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Through musical and visual compositions, Chacon explores the complex interactions between people, space, and sound. His works are often site-specific, engaging the material and sonic qualities of a given place to make perceptible what has been historically silenced or left out of the frame: legacies of colonial conquest and extraction, but also Indigenous memory, cultural narratives, and acts of resistance. Chacon’s exhibition includes a large-scale visual score for a performance, a sound installation and accompanying textile, and ink drawings. The first work viewers encounter is American Ledger No. 1 (2018), which recounts the creation story of the United States through graphic notation and accompanying musical instructions. The work takes form as a flag, a wall, a blanket, billboard, or door; here, it is drawn in graphite directly onto the wall by Chacon, existing in this iteration solely for the duration of the show. The score’s symbology adapts traditional Western musical notation—repeat signs, whole notes, quarter rests—into a pictographic record of the land now known as the United States of America. In descending chronological order, American Ledger No. 1 moves from the blank vastness of pre-history and the subsequent evolution of Indigenous thought, through the arrival of European ships, the violence of colonial encounters, and the enactment of Western laws, religion, and industries. The final “note” of the score is an extended black band, signaling the erasure of land and Indigenous worldviews. The score of American Ledger No. 1 is typically realized through a performance with sustained and percussive instruments, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match; the performance of these acoustic objects is left largely to the individual and collective interpretation of the players and their expression of the score’s accompanying text. In this exhibition, the score is not performed but displayed alongside a selection of ink drawings on paper. Three of the drawings were created for Chacon’s large-scale musical composition Tiguex, originally performed in twenty movements across the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on September 27, 2025. The drawings serve as visual and temporal maps of the performances, tracing the interaction of sound and landscape around the Rio Grande Valley.

5

The second exhibition room is centered around Storm Pattern (2021/2024), a textile score and multi-channel sound installation composed of field recordings of flying drones at the Standing Rock Oceti Sakowin camp on Thanksgiving weekend in 2016. Capturing the flight tone of drones controlled by police, DAPL security, and the water protectors themselves, Storm Pattern relays an intertwined soundtrack of surveillance and counter-surveillance. Both the title of the installation and composition of the score reference the symbolic Navajo weaving design of the same name. Like the traditional Storm Pattern rugs, Chacon’s textile features stepped, diagonal lines radiating outward from a central rectangular element. Along the score’s perimeter are bounded channels of overlapping zigzags, transmitting iterations of sound from one corner to the next. Presented together, the soundscape and visual score of Storm Pattern respond to encroachments upon Indigenous life with a sonic vision of collective resistance and solidarity.

6

Raven Chacon was born in 1977 in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works presented at The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; Ende Tymes Festival of Noise and Sonic Liberation, Brooklyn, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Illinois; SITE SANTA FE, New Mexico; and The Swiss Institute, New York. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Carnegie International 57, documenta 14, and The Whitney Biennial, as well as the 2-milelong land art installation Repellent Fence. A recording artist over the span of 24 years, Chacon has appeared on more than eighty releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. 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 a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship; a Pew Fellow Artists Residency (2022); The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022); The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts’ Ree Kaneko Award (2021); The American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition (2018); United States Artists Fellowship in Music (2016); The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship (2014); and The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts (2012).

9

Score for the Northernmost Piano, 2026 Ink on 100lb Strathmore 400 Series Bristol paper 18 x 23 3/4 inches (45.7 x 60.3 cm) 13

Excerpts from Tiguex No. 2, 2026 Ink on 100lb Strathmore 400 Series Bristol paper 18 x 23 3/4 inches (45.7 x 60.3 cm) 17

Excerpts from Tiguex No. 3, 2026 Ink on 100lb Strathmore 400 Series Bristol paper 18 x 23 3/4 inches (45.7 x 60.3 cm) 23

Excerpts from Tiguex No. 1, 2026 Ink on 100lb Strathmore 400 Series Bristol paper 18 x 23 3/4 inches (45.7 x 60.3 cm) 27

Score for an Outdoor Empty Loom, 2026 Ink on 100lb Strathmore 400 Series Bristol paper 23 3/4 × 18 inches (60.3 × 45.7 cm)

33

American Ledger No. 1, 2018 Dimensions variable As installed: Graphite on wall 117 x 178 inches (297.2 x 452.1 cm) Edition of 3

Storm Pattern, 2021/2024 Handwoven woolen textile, sound 70 x 1281/2 inches (177.8 x 326.4 cm) Edition of 5

RAVEN CHACON Born in 1977, Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, AZ Lives and works in Red Hook, NY EDUCATION 2004 MFA, Music, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA 2001 BA, Music, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2026 Scores for Coming Storms, Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York, NY, May 14–June 20, 2026 2025 Place Where the Waters Crossed, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, presented by MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain: In Praise of the Missing Image, Montréal, QC, Canada, September 10–November 1, 2025 Conductus, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover, Germany, July 31–August 8, 2025 2024 Rift Variations: Collaborative Video Works, STUK Gallery, Leuven, Belgium, October 9– December 15, 2024 Raven Chacon: Background Music, Chelsea Space, London, UK, October 4– December 13, 2024 Aviary, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY, September 26, 2024–July 3, 2025 Raven Chacon: Three Songs, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM, February 24–July 7, 2024 A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak, Swiss Institute, New York, NY, January 25–April 14, 2024; Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum/Davvi Norga Dáiddamusea, Tromsø, Norway, March 16–December 1, 2024

46

2017 Report, YYZ Artists Outlet, Toronto, ON, Canada, September 16–December 2, 2017 2016 Lightning Speak: Solo and Collaborative Work of Raven Chacon, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM; traveled to: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO, October 14, 2017–January 7, 2018 GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2026 Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, April 5–August 23, 2026 Speaking in Tongues, with Candice Hopkins, ICA LA, Los Angeles, CA, April 4–August 23, 2026 Rhythm Alliances, Colomboscope 2026, Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 22–31, 2026 In Interludes and Transitions / ‫لاحرتلاو ّلِحلا يف‬, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 30–May 2, 2026 2025 An Indigenous Present, ICA Boston, Boston, MA, October 9, 2025–March 8, 2026 a hand that is all our hands combined, Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Göteborg, Sweden, September 20– November 30, 2025 Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, performance with Iggor Cavalera, Laima Leyton, and the members of the Etenhiritipa Xavante community, 36th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, September 6, 2025–January 11, 2026 to carry, Sharjah Biennial 16, Sharjah City, United Arab Emirates, February 6–June 15, 2025 2024 Raven Chacon, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, and

Oscar Tuazon, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland, November 15– December 20, 2024 Precarious Joys, Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto, ON, Canada, September 21–December 1, 2024 2023 Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, June 23, 2023– January 28, 2024 Counterpublic 2023, St. Louis, MO, April 15–July 15, 2023 2022 one sun after another, Sonic Acts Biennial, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 30– October 23, 2022 Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, April 6–October 16, 2022 2020 ACOUSTIC RESONANCE, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME, October 2–December 11, 2020 Nine Lives, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL, September 12–November 15, 2020 2019 Raven Chacon, Gabi Dao, Lou Sheppard: Relations of Responsibility, Audain Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, October 10– December 7, 2019 as it rises into the air: listening in practice, GoetheInstitut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, Gallery MMB, Mumbai, India, August 22–October 5, 2019, curated by Juana Awad and Zeenat Nagree Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON, Canada, January 5–April 7, 2019; traveled to: The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, October 4–December 15, 2019; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener-Waterloo, ON, Canada, May

30–August 9, 2020; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, September 8–December 6, 2020; Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC, Canada, April 17–July 3, 2021

2018 We Have Delivered Ourselves From The Tonal, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, Germany, March 23–May 6, 2018 2016 Improvise Everything, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, AB, Canada, September 10–October 23, 2016 SITElines.2016: much wider than a line, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM, July 16, 2016– January 8, 2017 2012 Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop, and Aboriginal Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada, February 25–June 3, 2012 Harmony in the Making/Hózhó Náhásdlíí, TIME: Temporary Installation Made for the Environment, Navajo Nation, Arizona/ New Mexico 2011 S-O-S3 (Signals of Survival), A Space Gallery, Toronto, ON, Canada, September 24– October 29, 2011 PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley, CA The Block Museum of Art, Chicago, IL Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA CCS Bard Library and Archives, Annandale-onHudson, NY Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA Library of Congress, Washington, DC

47

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ The Morgan Library, New York, NY National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

48