Nani Chacon (Diné and Xicana), You can’t take it with you…so give it all away, mural, 2021
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Nanibah (Nani) Chacon (Diné and Xicana) just completed her stunning, monumental mural You can’t take it with you…so give it all away on the exterior of the Coe Center for the Arts’ new Project Space located at 1590 Pacheco Street, in the heart of midtown Santa Fe.
This mural visually captures the Coe’s ongoing work that merges an emphasis on its impressive collection of global Indigenous art from across time, with immersive, artist-driven projects centering the perspectives of leading local and regional Indigenous artists. Nani Chacon’s process in creating You can’t take it with you…so give it all away began with hands-on work in the Coe collection. Through visits with the collection, Chacon chose to focus her vision for the mural on an aesthetic, cultural, and material dialogue between two baskets—one contemporary and one historic.
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For Chacon, these two baskets, created by Elsie Stone Holiday (Diné) in the 1990s and an unknown Seneca maker in the late 1800s respectively, capture a sense of continuance across time and space. In featuring two larger-than-life Native women holding the baskets in light and love, Chacon shares the generational significance of making and sharing these artforms.
Nani Chacon, now based in Albuquerque, NM, was born in Gallup, NM, and grew up on both the Navajo reservation and in Corrales, NM. Her public art practice has taken her to sites across the country, where she has created numerous large-scale murals over the last twenty years. Chacon is deeply dedicated to education, community, and imagery with a particular focus on women and Indigenous arts.
The Coe is thrilled to share You can’t take it with you…so give it all away with our community. She encourages you to view the mural in person and visit the Coe collection. We are free and currently open to the public by appointment or the first Friday of every month.
This mural was generously supported by Gerald G. Stiebel, Coe/Wixom Family,