Raven Chacon: Three Songs

Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), will perform a one-of-a-kind, in-gallery concert of the piece created composed for her by Chacon as well as her own work. 

Raven Chacon created For Zitkála-Ša, a series of lithographs of musical arrangements dedicated to contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, and sound art. Chacon envisioned the scores as portraits of the women and how they navigate the twenty-first century. The title of the series refers to the Yankton Dakota composer and musician Zitkála-Šá, who lived from 1876 to 1938.  

About Laura Ortman 

A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Martha Colburn, New Red Order, and as part of the trio, In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, The Stone residency, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008, She founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.

Ortman is the recipient of the 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts Fellowship, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists, 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, 2016 Art Matters Grant, 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency, 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency, and 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room. Ortman was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

About the Exhibition 

Raven Chacon: Three Songs brings together three of Raven Chacon’s projects that pay tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work. In the series For Zitkála-Šá (2018), Chacon created musical arrangements dedicated to different contemporary Indigenous, First Nations, or Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, or sound art. The video installation Three Songs (2021) features Indigenous women singing as they reoccupy sites of historic massacres, displacement, or relocation of tribal people. The final work, Silent Choir (2016-2017), is a field recording Chacon made while taking part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which captures the silent protest of 600 water protectors facing police and security forces. When presented in unison, these works resound the suppressed histories and present-day stories of Native resistance in the face of systemic power. 

Raven Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) composer, performer, and installation artist born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Kennedy Center, and the Whitney Museum, among others. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. 

For Zitkála-Šá Performances: 

Feb 24: Kona Mirabal + Masa Rain Mirabal 

Apr 6: Autumn Chacon 

May 4: Laura Ortman 

Jun 7: Marisa DeMarco (performing For Carmina Escobar) 

Support for the For Zitkála-Šá Concert Series is provided by the Richard B. Siegel Foundation 

The Harwood’s current exhibition, Raven Chacon: Three Songs, amplifies stories of Indigenous resistance and pays tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work. Join us for a dynamic conversation featuring local Indigenous women working at the intersection of activism and the arts. Moderated by Christina Castro, PhD, the panel will share stories from their recent projects and engage in a dialogue about the power of art to disrupt inequitable systems and imagine a future grounded in Indigenous sovereignty.

This event is free. Donations welcome.

Panelists

Autumn D. Gomez

Emileah Lujan

Midnite Lujan

Christina Castro, PhD

About the Moderator

Dr. Christina M. Castro (Taos Pueblo/Jemez Pueblo/Xicana) is a mother, writer, scholar, educator, community organizer, multidimensional artist, public speaker and aspiring farmer. She currently resides in O’ga P’ogeh, Santa Fe, NM within her traditional homelands. In 2017, Dr. Castro co-founded Three Sisters Collective (3SC), a Pueblo-women centered grassroots organization devoted to art, advocacy, education and community building. She received her Doctorate from the Pueblo PhD Program at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation and Justice Studies in 2018 and is an independent consultant with Castro Consulting, LLC.  

About the Panelists

Midnight S. Lujan (Taos Pueblo/Swedish) is a woman, born and raised in Taos, New Mexico. Lujan is an emerging talent committed to lifelong sobriety and is a full-time student at The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing. Lujan is committed to embodying the creative processes and disciplines of decolonization through behavioral health and wellness, grass-roots organizing, literature, advocacy, creative direction and production. christinamcastro.com

Autumn Dawn Gomez (Taos Pueblo/Comanche) is a multidisciplinary artist, specializing in community and public murals, graphic design, printing, and workshops. Born and raised in O’ga P’Ogeh Owingeh (Santa Fe), Autumn is also a co-founder of Three Sisters Collective, a community based grassroots organization creating space for Indigenous women, femmes and their families in so-called Santa Fe. Autumn is often found organizing with community, creating, learning about birthwork and herbalism, and spending time with her family and cat. Autumn is an On Being Social Healing Fellow for 2023-24. You can find more of their work at pimikwusii.com 

Emileah Lujan was born and raised traditionally in Taos Pueblo, “Home of the Red Willow People.” Inspired by the movement at Standing Rock in 2016, Emileah discovered her voice as an Indigenous youth. Her journey reflects personal transformation and resilience. As a recovering addict, she has found purpose in the recovery field, grassroots organizations, advocacy, and creative arts. Emileah is a third generation hoop dancer and fancy shawl dancer, currently blending traditional dance with resistance performance arts to promote cultural preservation and social change.  

Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Marisa Demarco will perform a one-of-a-kind, in-gallery concert. This ticketed performance will include the score For Carmina Escobar, as well as her own work.

Raven Chacon created For Zitkála-Ša, a series of lithographs of musical arrangements dedicated to contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, and sound art. Chacon envisioned the scores as portraits of the women and how they navigate the twenty-first century. The title of the series refers to the Yankton Dakota composer and musician Zitkála-Šá, who lived from 1876 to 1938.

 About Marisa Demarco

A lifelong musician and performer, Marisa Demarco surfaces and interrogates contemporary truths through worn sculpture, installation, music composition and journalism. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she’s the founder of Gatas y Vatas festival for boundary-pushing performance and Milch de la Máquina, a women’s performance art crew. She’s also a leader with Death Convention Singers, the largest noise collective in the Southwest. Her work has appeared in galleries and museums, such as SITE Santa Fe, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the UNM Art Museum, GRAFT Gallery, CFA Contemporary, and at the Carlsbad Museum as part of the Atomic Culture series. Demarco received her MFA in Experimental Art + Technology from the University of New Mexico. She’s worked as a journalist for over 20 years, and she’s an editor for the national nonprofit network States Newsroom.

About Carmina Escobar

Carmina Escobar is an experimental vocalist, improviser, performer, multimedia artist, composer, and educator from Mexico City, living and working in Los Angeles. She has extensively explored the capacities of her voice, developing a wide range of vocal techniques that she applies not only to her performance and creative practice but also to investigate radical ideas and concepts regarding the voice 

About the Exhibition 

Raven Chacon: Three Songs brings together three of Raven Chacon’s projects that pay tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work. In the series For Zitkála-Šá (2018), Chacon created musical arrangements dedicated to different contemporary Indigenous, First Nations, or Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, or sound art. The video installation Three Songs (2021) features Indigenous women singing as they reoccupy sites of historic massacres, displacement, or relocation of tribal people. The final work, Silent Choir (2016-2017), is a field recording Chacon made while taking part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which captures the silent protest of 600 water protectors facing police and security forces. When presented in unison, these works resound the suppressed histories and present-day stories of Native resistance in the face of systemic power. 

Raven Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) composer, performer, and installation artist born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Kennedy Center, and the Whitney Museum, among others. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music. 

For Zitkála-Šá Performances

Feb 24: Kona Mirabal + Masa Rain Mirabal 

Apr 6: Autumn Chacon 

May 4: Laura Ortman 

Jun 7: Marisa DeMarco (performing For Carmina Escobar) 

Support for the For Zitkála-Šá Concert Series is provided by the Richard B. Siegel Foundation