Artist Bios

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Nanibah “Nani” Chacon is a Dine (Navajo) and Chicana artist, with disciplines spanning painting, installation and sculpture. Chacon was born in Gallup, New Mexico and grew up on both the Navajo reservation and in New Mexico. She is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Chacon’s most notable works have been within the public arts sector, in which she has a cumulative experience of over 20 years. In 2003 Chacon received her Bachelor in Education from the University of New Mexico. She has seven years teaching experience in the classroom and has also written curriculum for alternative education programs. Chacons’ works as an artist often include community-based integration and social practice, working as key components within the public work pieces she creates. Creating public works, facilitates a social engagement process, making community a central part of her process, as well as elevates her personal philosophy that art should be accessible and a meaningful catalyst for social change. Her work has been recognized for its unique style and attention paid to site specific location and content, as well as the integration of socio-political issues affecting women and indigenous peoples. Chacon’s work focuses concepts within indigenous culture, bringing the complexity of indigenous people to the forefront. The content of the work is used to incite dialogue though site specific placement, cultural content and community dialogue. Chacon currently exhibits across the United States and abroad. She has maintained a career as an artist and educator creating works both Nationally and Internationally, while working with multiple organizations and institutions. receiving commissions and collaboration opportunities worldwide.

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The most notable being Creative Capital, Participant in the Whitney Biennial, SITE Santa Fe, the National Endowment for the Arts, California Endowment for the arts. US consulate and Embassy in Russia, the 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 clients have included: Facebook, Go Pro, NBC Universal, NPR ,Disney, Comedy Central, Honor the Earth, and Sons and Brothers, with work acquired by LACMA, Whitney Museum of Art, Getty, Tia Collection, Gochman Collection.

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Regina de Miguel is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores how imaginaries, violence, and knowledge are produced, inherited, and materially grounded in territories understood as geotraumatic sites. Through films, installations, and hybrid projects, she questions the supposed neutrality of scientific images and devices, bringing maps, models, archives, and data visualizations into friction with speculative and narrative strategies. Writing and voice play a structural role, opening fissures in dominant languages and rehearsing alliances between human and non-human agencies. Her work has been shown internationally and is held in collections such as TBA21, Fundación “la Caixa”, and Museo Reina Sofía.

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Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979, Nairobi, Kenya) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based in Chicago, his practice addresses issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Constantly seeking to create new spaces and forms of agency, Fernandes’ work often takes on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2014), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020), an Artadia Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019), and most recently, the Platform Award (2024). In 2024, he was also honored with the Creative Voice Award by Arts Alliance Illinois. His work has been presented at prestigious venues such as the 2019 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), among many others. Fernandes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. He is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago and Susan Inglett Gallery in New York. Recent and upcoming projects include performances and solo presentations at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO), the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO), the Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA), and Prospect.6 (New Orleans, LA). In spring 2026, a major new commission and solo exhibition will debut at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago.​

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Skawennati (b. 1969, Kanien’kehá:ka of the Hotinonshón:ni) makes art across a variety of media. Her machinimas and machinimagraphs (movies and still images made in virtual environments), textiles and sculpture have been presented and collected internationally.

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From her perspectives as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman and as a cyberpunk avatar, internationally exhibiting artist Skawennati has spent this millenium imagining Indigenous people thriving. In her virtual studio she customizes avatars and environments to create scenarios that can be recorded as movies (aka machinimas) and still images (machinimagraphs). She also makes physical objects including sculpture and costumes, and writes the occasional song. Her practice is gradually coalescing into an alternate universe.

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Her works have been presented online and in-person in galleries, classrooms, festivals and fashion shows, and are included in the a number of collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada and the Thoma Foundation. She is honoured to have received a 2025 Meritorious Service Medal; a 2022 Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions Grant; a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; and a 2011 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

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Over the years, Skawennati has been active in various communities. In the 80s she joined the nuclear-disarmament peace group, SAGE (Students Against Global Extermination), and the Quebec Native Women’s Association. In the 90s she co-founded Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, while working in and with various Indigenous organizations and artist-run centres, including the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal and Oboro. In 2005, she co-founded Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation network based at Concordia University whose projects include the Skins workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Digital Media as well as the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Throughout most of the teens, she volunteered extensively for her children’s elementary school, where she also initiated an Indigenous Awareness programme. In 2019, she co-founded centre d’art daphne, Montreal’s first Indigenous artist-run centre. In 2023, she also joined the board of Rhizome, an international hub for new media.

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Originally from Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati belongs to the Turtle clan. She holds a Bachelor degree of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, where she resides. She is represented by ELLEPHANT.