Statement:

I am a lens based artist from Las Cruces, New Mexico and lineal descendant of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. My work focuses on grief and generational cycles of systemic violence and the history of the Southwestern territories of the United States. I make collages, land based installation, artist books and performance work that centers around my photographic works.

​

My work as an artist, curator, archivist and educator all converge within a social practice that canonizes my own experiences and those of my family, within the legacy of violence perpetrated against Indigenous people, Chicanos and Nuevo Mexicanos in the region. 

​

I frequently return to the family photo, and my academic roots in journalism as a framework of expression, and create access points to history and culture through photography and its relationship to time. I expand on forms like the family scrapbook, the funerary photo montage, and the domestic portrait wall as a way of connecting my lived experience to my fine art practice. 

​

Bio:

Marcus Xavier Chormicle is a currently MFA graduate student in the Photography, Video and Imaging program at the University of Arizona. He is a recipient of the 2025 United States Latinx Artist Fellowship. In 2020, he received his BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University. 

​

In 2021 he founded 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 the expressed goal of connecting the artist’s work to the day to day life of the average Cruceño, through artistic reflections on generational cycles, issues of migration, spirituality, and Indigenous ways of expressing place. 
 
and in 2024 he completed the New Mexico Arts Fellowship and residency in Lincoln New Mexico.

In May 2024, he held his first museum solo exhibition at the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas El Paso.
 

​

Contact

Location: Tucson, Arizona/Las Cruces, New Mexico

Email: marcuschormicle@gmail.com
Instagram: @chormicle

CV

​

Education
BA - Journalism and Mass Communications    August 2016 - Dec 2020
Minors - Studio Art, Digital Marketing
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University  Phoenix, AZ, USA

​

MFA - Photography, Video & Imaging    August 2025 - Ongoing
School of Art    University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ, USA

 

CAV Gallery
Founded by Marcus Xavier Chormicle November 2020

 

Residencies & Fellowships
United States Latinx Arts Forum Fellowship, - June 2025
New Mexico Arts Artist Fellowship, Lincoln, NM - Feb 2024
Light Work Artist In Residency, Syracuse, NY - October 2023
Las Cruces Arts and Cultural District Artist Residency, Las Cruces, New Mexico - Feb. 2021

 

Curatorial Experience
“When The Earth Was Young”, co curated with Diego Medina, Smoke The Moon, Smoke the Moon - August 2024
“Tú Eres Tú” (second iteration), CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - July 2023
“Cura” Jose Lucero & Maryssa Rose Chavez, CAV Gallery, - Jan 2023
“‘NM’ An Original View Through Indigenous Photography, CAV Gallery, - June 2022
“El Santo Niño Project” CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - Jan 2022
“Celestial Bodies” CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - Mar 2022
“Tú Eres Tú”, CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - Sep 2021

Exhibition History

 

Solo Exhibitions 
“Man Down” Presa House, San Antonio, Texas - March 2026
“Say Uncle” Smoke The Moon, Santa Fe, NM - August 2025
“BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO”, 
El Paso Frame Company, El Paso, TX - July 2025
“Say Uncle”, Independent Public Installation, Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, - Mar 2025
“To Be Whole In The Desert”, Pidgin Palace, Tucson, AZ - Dec 2024
“In The Cases”, Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ - Sep 2024
“Prayer For My Triste”, The Hood New Mexico, Las Cruces, NM- Sep 2024
“You’re Meant To Be Here With The Living”, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, TX - May 2024
“To Be Whole In The City”, Phoenix, AZ, April 2024
Still Playing With Fire, Gone Tomorrow Gallery, Tucson, AZ - Nov 2022
Still Playing With Fire, CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, NM - August 2022 
Xico Inc, Phoenix, Arizona - January 2021 (Virtual) 

 

Group Exhibitions
“Umbral/Threshold” Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona - Feb 2026 
“Muscle Memory: Lens On The Body” Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona - Jan 2026
“Ear to the Ground, Eyes Trained Up” Revolt Gallery, Taos, New Mexico - November 2025
“Tough Skin, Soft Ribs” Light Work, Syracuse, New York - October 2025
“Format 01” Known Gallery, Desert Hot Springs, California - October 2025
“Tú Eres Tú”, CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - Sep 2021
“The One With All The Squares” El Paso Frame Co., El Paso, Texas - Nov 2021
“El Santo Niño Project” CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - Jan 2022
“Outcropping: Indigenous Art Now”, Southampton Art Center, Southampton, New York- Feb 22
“‘NM’ An Original View Through Indigenous Photography”, CAV Gallery, - June 2022
“Photo Now” Woodstock Center For Photography, Kingston, New York - Nov 2022
“Tú Eres Tú”, CAV Gallery, Las Cruces, New Mexico - July 2023

 

Publications
“Wrack My Brain”, Published by El Palacio Magazine - March 2025 (Upcoming)
“Contact Sheets”, Published by Light Work - Sep 2024
“Say Uncle”, Published by CAV Gallery - Sep 2021
F-Stop Magazine, Featured Portfolio - Dec 2020
Southwest Contemporary Magazine, “Bodies//Boundaries” issue - Spring 2021
Soft Qrtly, “Winter 2020” - Jan 2021
Distant Zine, Published by Tim Carpenter and Nathan Pearce - Jan 2021

 

Awards and Acknowledgements
Workshop De Allende - Scholarship Recipient - 2023
Foto Forum Santa Fe- Members ShowBest in Show - 2022
Radius Scholarship for the Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb Photobook Workshop - March 2020
Kris Graves Projects Lost III - Shortlisted - January 2020
Charcoal Book Club Portfolio Review - Selected Attendee - March 2019
Charcoal Book Club Portfolio Review - Selected Attendee - March 2018