Raven Chacon
For Zitkála Šá Series (For Carmina Escobar)
2019
Not on view
Date
2019
Classification
Prints
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 11 × 8 1/2in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm)
Accession number
2022.15.3
Series
For Zitkála Šá Series
Edition
19/20
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the O’Grady Foundation
Rights and reproductions
© Raven Chacon, courtesy of Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts
Visual description
Raven Chacon’sFor Zitkála-Šáseries (2017–20) is composed of 13 lithographs that measure 11 × 8 ½ in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm) each.For Zitkála-Šáis a series of thirteen graphic scores for a solo performer. Each composition is dedicated to an American Indian or First Nations woman working in the field of contemporary music performance, composition, or sound art. This visual description is for the work in the series:For Buffy Sainte-Marie.
The paper of this print by Raven Chacon is a cream color. A little off center and surrounded by the cream-colored space of the paper are 6 zig zag lines. The lines are black, thin and delicate. They are arranged on a diagonal that angles down to the left. There is space above and below the lines. The first 3 zig zag lines are equally spaced above each other and the zig zags resemble 3 steps. There is a gap and the 3 lines continue though they are longer in length - one can count 5 steps made by the zig zags. The lines appear to float within the emptiness of the paper.
In the upper right corner, there is text that looks handwritten. The text reads as follows: For Buffy Sainte-Marie. The letters are small, all are capitalized and their color is a transparent reddish brown that fades into the cream-colored paper. The words hug the top right corner of the paper.
Audio
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Raven Chacon, De la serie Para Zitkála-Šá
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Raven Chacon: Soy Raven Chacon. Soy compositor y artista, y vivo en Albuquerque, Nuevo México.
El proyecto consta de trece partituras dedicadas a músicas, artistas de sonido y compositoras mujeres indígenas contemporáneas.
Las partituras son una especie de retrato, ya que las hice pensando en el trabajo de cada una de ellas. En algunas, aparece la notación occidental: claves, cabezas y líneas. Otras quizás incorporan más formas geométricas tribales relacionadas con los orígenes de estas mujeres. Y otras tienen otro tipo de simbología, tal vez símbolos matemáticos o numerológicos. Son otros tipos de diseño más ambiguos que incorporan significados sónicos, pero también representan una cosmovisión. Por ejemplo, pueden representar el paisaje, o tal vez los puntos cardinales de la Tierra.
Una de mis preferidas de la serie es la que compuse para una violinista nativa de Alaska: una música iñupiat, Heidi Senungetuk. Heidi es una de las mujeres para las que compuse que viene del mundo de la música clásica y tiene ese tipo de formación. Entonces, esa partitura hace uso de las líneas y del sistema del pentagrama para crear una suerte de subversión de este tipo de notación. A partir del modo en que esta partitura “funciona”, se puede componer una melodía en una línea tradicional, pero las demás líneas tienen formas alternativas. De hecho, algunas parecen aves o las pendientes de una ladera o montaña. Luego, se debe volver a transportar la melodía a ese pentagrama nuevo.
Todos estos símbolos son distintos y todos tienen un significado, pero, al mismo tiempo, no están completamente abiertos a la interpretación o la expresión. De hecho, muchos son bastante específicos en cuanto a sus instrucciones. Para mí, son acogedores.
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Verbal Description: Raven Chacon’s For Zitkála-Šá series
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Raven Chacon’s For Zitkála-Šá series (2017–20) is composed of 13 lithographs that measure 11 × 8 ½ in. (27.9 × 21.6 cm) each. For Zitkála-Šá is a series of thirteen graphic scores for a solo performer. Each composition is dedicated to an American Indian or First Nations woman working in the field of contemporary music performance, composition, or sound art. This visual description is for the work in the series: For Buffy Sainte-Marie.
The paper of this print by Raven Chacon is a cream color. A little off center and surrounded by the cream-colored space of the paper are 6 zig zag lines. The lines are black, thin and delicate. They are arranged on a diagonal that angles down to the left. There is space above and below the lines. The first 3 zig zag lines are equally spaced above each other and the zig zags resemble 3 steps. There is a gap and the 3 lines continue though they are longer in length - one can count 5 steps made by the zig zags. The lines appear to float within the emptiness of the paper.
In the upper right corner, there is text that looks handwritten. The text reads as follows: For Buffy Sainte-Marie. The letters are small, all are capitalized and their color is a transparent reddish brown that fades into the cream-colored paper. The words hug the top right corner of the paper.
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Raven Chacon, For Zitkála-Šá series
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Raven Chacon: I’m Raven Chacon. I’m a composer and artist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The project is thirteen scores dedicated to contemporary Indigenous women musicians and sound artists and composers.
The scores then took on a bit of a portraiture form in thinking about the work that each of these women make. And so, some of them might use Western notation: clefs, and note heads, and staff lines. Others might incorporate more of the tribal geometries that these women are from. And others are other kinds of symbology, other kinds of maybe mathematical or numerological symbols. Other kinds of maybe ambiguous designs that can take on both sonic meanings, but also meanings of world view. Maybe of landscape, maybe the cardinal directions of the earth.
One of my favorite ones of the series is the one I wrote for a violinist who’s an Alaska native. Iñupiat musician named Heidi Senungetuk. And Heidi is one of the women that I wrote for that does have a classical music background and has that kind of training. And so, that score uses the staff lines and five line staff and system to make a kind of subversion of that notation. And the way that score works is one has an opportunity to compose a melody onto a traditional staff line, but you see the subsequent lines are misshapen. In fact, some of them look like birds or look like slopes of a hillside, or of a mountain. And one is to then transpose that melody back onto those new staff lines.
They’re all different and they all have meaning, all of these symbols, but at the same time, they’re not totally open to interpretation or expression. In fact, a lot of them are very specific in their instructions. I think they are welcoming.