Marcus Xavier Chormicle is a lens-based artist from Las Cruces, New Mexico. His work focuses on family, memory, and the intersection of class, race, and history in the Southwest.
Through his practice he aims to connect the history of the place to the current circumstances of his family as the subject of his imagery. His two major works are “Still Playing With Fire,” a multigenerational reflection on the violence of Southern New Mexico and its impact on Indigenous and Latinx living people of today; and “Say Uncle,” a celebration of heritage where he follows his uncles through the canyons of their ancestral homeland on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation.
He recently closed the Cristian Anthony Vallejo Memorial Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico, an art space dedicated to his late little cousin who passed away of a drug overdose in 2020. During the two year run at the gallery he held 15 exhibitions of primarily Indigenous and Latinx artists, with exhibitions focusing on generational cycles, issues of migration, spirituality, and Indigenous ways of expressing place.
In 2024 he will split his time between Las Cruces, NM and Séc-He (Palm Springs, CA), his ancestral homeland, to develop ongoing projects.