Nanibah Chacon

Visiting Dates:

October 29th - November 21, 2018

Artist Nanibah Chacon, a Diné Xicana artist from New Mexico, depicts Indigenous and Latin women in power in her work, which embodies the idea of the ongoing presence of these women in our society. Her work also brings the surviving culture of these women to society. Nanibah Chacon came to MSU as a dual Artist in Residence with RCAH and the Womxn of Color Initiative (WOCI), also sponsored by the Center for Gender in Global Contexts, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and Chicano/Latino Studies.

As part of her residency, Nanibah Chacon met with students, held workshops in RCAH and throughout MSU, gave a gallery talk, curated an exhibit in the RCAH LookOut Gallery called "Ni' hoodzaan: The Femable Ground,” and created a special, site-specific mural in Old Town, Lansing.

LookOut Gallery Director Tessa Paneth-Pollak helped curate the exhibit, and worked directly with Chacon on the curation of pieces in the gallery. When asked about her perspective on the message of Chacon’s work, Paneth-Pollak said that Chacon pulls the “contemporaneity and the beauty of Indigenous women, against the grain of a history of images that have attempted to relegate them to a primitive past and trap them in stereotype.”

Nanibah Chacon’s mural, “Maawed Miijim: The One Who Provides” (pictured below) in Old Town depicts the act of wild strawberry picking, sacred to the Anishinaabe. Her mural was voted Eyecandy of the Year by the Citypulse.