Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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JULIANNE MOORE
Minesh Bacrania
Photography by Minesh Bacrania

Raven Chacon

Visual Artist and Musician

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

People are surprised that my music is so noisy. The general public has the most ridiculous and stereotypical ideas about what Native American music is. These assumptions rarely envision any kind of contemporary composition made by Indigenous people. I blame the New Age genre for a lot of these misconceptions.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF.

Earlier this year, I was involved in a bad car accident that completely destroyed my left wrist. Given that I’m a guitarist and pianist, I found myself questioning if I’d ever be able to play these instruments again. It has forced me to recalibrate my priorities of how I make music and the way I see the instruments that I’ve known all my life.

“The general public has the most ridiculous and stereotypical ideas about what Native American music is. These assumptions rarely envision any kind of contemporary composition made by Indigenous people.”

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, ALBUM, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

As a teenager, I was completely entrenched in the books of Carlos Castaneda. They recognized the Indigenous people of the Southwest while seemingly honoring the sacred plants that our people use. At the same time, I was skeptical of the writing of Castaneda and was able to discover for myself, eventually, that the books were total bullshit. However, they allowed me to envision a pathway for experimental art and music while forcing me to think critically about how Indigenous people are framed by those writing about us.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE.

George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic. My music might be in another universe from this Afrofuturist legend, but Clinton’s ability to conduct a wild cast of characters into an ensemble and make some of the most influential music of the 20th century has been an influence throughout my career.

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ROSE BYRNE
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JULIANNE MOORE