Nani Chacon

Nani Chacon has more than twenty years of experience painting in public spaces. Early on, she began as a graffiti artist, learning and growing from the challenges the medium presented. Chacon worked to develop her technical skills as a large-scale painter, excelling in scale, color, design, composition and style. The experience also taught her about the public connection to art, marginalization in a public space, and how to reclaim space through community-based art. Chacon received a Bachelor of Arts in education, and has always felt that the importance of developing a skill and practice was to one day be able to share that knowledge with others.

Chacon’s site-specific public art projects are community focused in that she directly collaborates and engages with the people from the community in which the work will be placed. Through conversations and research, her work reflects the landscape and people of that space. Chacon’s murals often address Indigenous thought, aesthetics, and identity, and, in effect, offer visibility to and empower Indigenous people. She places deep value in creating artworks that are accessible and offer the viewer a space in which they might contemplate important cultural and political connotations as they relate to the place in which the work is exhibited.