1 Sing the praises of Raven Chacon.
Pulitzer prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist Raven Chacon (Diné) presents three works honoring Indigenous women in the new Harwood Museum of Art exhibition, Three Songs, opening at 6:30 p.m. Friday in Taos. “Raven came from a matriarchal community,” says Nicole Dial-Kay, Harwood Museum curator of exhibitions and collections. “It’s important for him to focus on women as keepers of culture and creators of memory.”
Each piece in the exhibition, on view through July 7, represents a different medium. Silent Choir is a sound installation Chacon created from recordings of the environment at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, many of which were led by women water protectors. “It’s very powerful,” Dial-Kay says. “It requires the most of people for them to imagine being there. You sit between two speakers and feel the presence of thousands of protestors.”
For Zitkála-Sá dedicates lithographs to Indigenous women who work in the arts. The title takes the name of the Yankton Dakota composer and musician who endured cultural erasure at a boarding school before becoming a cultural essayist, poet, short story writer, translator, violinist, and revered cultural leader. “Each lithograph is dedicated to a great Indigenous woman working through words, music, and art,” Dial-Kay says. Meant to be read like compositions, each is accompanied by directions of how to read and perform it. The museum’s programming includes four performances of the compositions, including one by Kona Mirabal (Taos Pueblo) on Saturday at 6 p.m.
A series of videos, Three Songs features Indigenous women singing in their tribal languages at sites of immense cultural trauma. For example, Sage Bond (Diné) sings along the Trail of Tears. “There are these terrible scenes,” Dial-Kay says. “But Raven has collapsed the past with the present so you can see what’s happened in the past, but also the strength and power of these women carrying on, speaking for their nations, being present and vocal.”
