Murals of Nani Chacon

Murals of Nani Chacon is a documentary by an artist about an artist. Nani Chacon (Diné/Chicana) and ACVilla (Chicana) have each traveled throughout the political borders of the US for over a decade, one designing and realizing public artworks and the other touring with her work and her partner, musician Thollem McDonas. This lifestyle of perpetual touring allowed for ACVilla to amass a trove of documentations of murals, many of which are included in the umbrella project Artists Engaged. Thollem McDonas has scored this film, interweaving field recordings and original compositions, capturing both the present moment as well as the sense of traveling though this vast land.

Both based in New Mexico, the two artists’ paths converged for interviews that ACVilla uses as a narrative throughout the film. With insights on Life and moments that come with painting walls in public spaces, Nani verbally sculpts her works, taking them well beyond and deep within the surface’s two dimensions.

ACVilla focuses the attention on Nani’s murals as a whole, and on the details that Nani combines under myriad situations: community, surroundings, weather, textures, time, and immediacy. Through this unique collection, ACVilla reveals a story that Nani has continued to illustrate since 2012, one of the land and the beings that live upon it, of empowerment and social engagement, of observation and introspection.

The team involved in seeing this film finished includes musician/composer Thollem and a New Mexico-based post-production crew. It will debut at the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center in Española, NM, in February 2025.

If you would like to see this film come to your community, please contact angela @acvillavisions.com.

ACVilla is a visual artist (video) and videographer based in New Mexico. Her practice is a developing distillation of her past and present lives: the eighth child of a bi-racial couple, a former bilingual teacher and a perpetually touring artist. She focuses her camera on the subtleties of interpersonal dynamics and the power that context plays in constantly redefining what people believe they already know. She is known for contextualizations, a practice of projecting the outside world in, as well as her ongoing documentation of murals. Bio

Nanibah “Nani” Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) and Chicana artist, most recognized as a painter and muralist. Chacon was born in Gallup, New Mexico and raised on the Navajo reservation and in New Mexico. Chacon’s most notable works have been within the public arts sector, in which she has a cumulative experience of over twenty years. Chacon’s public works facilitate social engagement and community-based integration, elevating her personal philosophy that art should be accessible and a meaningful catalyst for social change. Bio

Thollem is a pianist, keyboardist, composer, improviser, singer-songwriter, activist, author and teacher. He has toured throughout North America and Europe as an itinerant artist for two decades, performing, teaching and collaborating in myriad situations across the idiomatic spectrum. His lifelong interest has been to work with people from all walks of life, bringing artists and communities together in ways that might create something uniquely valuable to everyone involved. Bio

If you would like to support this film, you will be contributing to the costs of post-production and a debut screening in Española, NM, in January, 2025. Please contact angela @acvillavisions.com to discuss the variety of ways, financial and in-kind, your generosity can be realized.