Nani Chacon received the Creative Capital Award in 2024. Chacon (b.1980 Gallup, New Mexico) is a Diné and Chicana artist who has been highly active in the public arts sector for over two decades. Although known for large scale murals, her practice expands across disciplines, including illustration and installation. Last year a major solo museum exhibition at SITE Santa Fe included rope installation pieces based on weaving patterns and large-scale paintings inspired by Diné creation stories. Her numerous mural projects focus on community engagement, addressing the complexity of contemporary Indigenous culture and identities. Chacon holds that art should be accessible and a meaningful catalyst for social change, that this is possible in works embedded with nuanced concepts and addressing urgent socio-political issues. Cultural repair and radical colonial resistance through masterful visual storytelling and retelling. These murals are reclamations of the spaces they inhabit.

Chacon received her bachelor’s in Education from the University of New Mexico in 2003. Her work in education informs her art practice; incorporating her proficiency in teaching in various projects taught formally at a graduate school level as well as with grassroots organizations and learning centers. Notable Projects have been supported by; National Endowment for the Arts, California Endowment for the Arts, US Consulate and Embassy in Russia, Obama Foundation, NM Public Arts Foundation, National Museum of Mexican Art Chicago, Navajo Nation Museum, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and the Museum of Native Contemporary Art. Her works have been on view at the Harwood Museum, SITE Santa Fe, the Phoenix Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, El Museo, Tucson Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts San Francisco, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and others. She is featured in the major new publication An Indigenous Present, edited by Jeffrey Gibson.