Ree Kaneko Award winner Raven Chacon

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts is pleased to announce Raven Chacon is its first Ree Kaneko Award winner. As part of Bemis Center’s 40th anniversary, the organization increased and renamed its annual Alumni Award in honor of Ree Kaneko, Bemis Center co-founder, first Executive Director, and Board Member Emerita. Her vision and passion embody the spirit of this unrestricted annual award designed to provide financial support to increase the capacity of a Bemis alum’s practice. Established in 2019 at 5,000 USD the 2021 award is 25,000 USD thanks to individual donors. The annual award is by nomination only and is selected by a panel of renowned curators and art historians.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with 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. Each year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He 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, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM. 

Chacon was Bemis Center’s inaugural Sound Art and Experimental Music Artist-in-Residence May-August 2019 and provided valuable expertise and guidance on how to best support artists within the field. Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts launched its Sound Art + Experimental Music Program in May 2019 with generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Embedded within Bemis Center’s renowned international Residency Program, this program offers a unique experience for artists working in sound, composition, voice, and experimental music. Chacon also co-curated Inner Ear Vision: Sound as Medium, on view at Bemis Center July 11, 2019–September 14, 2019, along with artists Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and art historian Maria Elena Buszek, as part of the events surrounding the launch of the program.

The 2021 Ree Kaneko Award jurors include Andrea Andersson, Founding Director and Chief Curator, Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought; Carla Acevedo Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Franklin Sirmans, Director, Perez Art Museum Miami; and Rachel Adams, Chief Curator and Director of Programs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. 

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts facilitates the creation, presentation, and understanding of contemporary art through an international residency program, exhibitions, and educational programs to inspire an open and diverse dialogue on the critical issues that give shape and meaning to the human condition.