Navajo Nation, seen as if it were Mars. That is the idea at the heart of New Work: Raven Chacon, which opens to the public at SFMOMA on Saturday, October 24, after member previews on October 23 and 24. It is the Pulitzer Prize winning composer and artist's first West Coast solo exhibition, and it runs on Floor 6 through November 7, 2027.
The Naming of Names
The centerpiece is The Naming of Names, a new multichannel video installation commissioned for the show. Chacon built it from found footage held by the Prelinger Archives in San Francisco: silent home movies shot by travelers visiting the Navajo Nation in the 1950s and 1960s. In his hands, those vacation reels become something stranger. The desert and canyons where Chacon grew up are presented as an alien world, empty and waiting to be "discovered."
The subtitles come from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, first published in 1950. Pairing a classic story about colonizing another planet with tourist footage of tribal lands is a sharp move, and it lands. The question of who gets to explore, name and claim a place sits right on the screen.
The soundtrack is Chacon's own, a mix of field recordings and electronic music. He has described processing his recordings of weather, landscape and life so the room feels like a visit to another planet, and the screens span several viewing planes, with maps of an imagined expedition lighting up in the corners.
Two canyons, two worlds
Alongside the installation, SFMOMA is showing layered topographical drawings that put Tséyiʼ, also known as Canyon de Chelly, next to Valles Marineris, the vast canyon system on Mars. Laid over each other, the two landscapes start to collapse into one, which is exactly the point. Time and distance get compressed, and the long history of the land comes into view.
Why it matters now
The commission debuts during the United States' Semiquincentennial, and Chacon is direct about it. In a conversation published by SFMOMA, he calls the 250 year mark "a time marker" that measures a very short span against the deep time written in the rocks themselves. The work asks visitors to think about the human and non human inhabitants who were there long before, and about stewarding these places together.
Chacon brings Diné worldviews into everything he makes, moving between sound, video, sculpture and performance. Anyone who knows him from his compositions will find the same patience here, with loops and drones that change how time feels in the room.
Our call
This one is Surfacing. Found footage, science fiction and a composer's ear make for one of the most original museum shows of the season. If you are in the Bay Area, it is worth planning a slow visit, and entry is included with general admission. Hours and tickets are on the SFMOMA visit page.
For more art with a cosmic streak, read about Lita Albuquerque's Cosmic Land and Es Devlin's Other Worlds, or revisit RM x SFMOMA.
New Work: Raven Chacon at SFMOMA · Plan a visit · Prelinger Archives
