Through lens-based work I primarily address feelings of grief through an examination of the legacy of colonialism in the Southwest region of the ‘United States’ specifically the historic territories of Nuevo México and Alta California, and the impacts of the histories of violence on the contemporary lives of Indigenous and Chicano peoples.

Marcus Xavier Chormicle is a lens-based artist and independent curator from Las Cruces, New Mexico and lineal descendant of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. Through photography, he explores ideas around family, memory, and the intersection of class, race, and history in the Southwest. His work draws a throughline from the history of settler colonialism in the New Mexico and Alta California territories, to contemporary lives of Chicanx and Indigenous peoples.

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 curated 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 2023 he completed the Light Work Artist in Residency Program in Syracuse, New York, and in 2024 he completed the New Mexico Arts Fellowship and residency in Lincoln.

Through 2024 he split his time between Las Cruces and Séc-He (Palm Springs, CA), his ancestral homeland, to develop ongoing projects. In the past year he has shown in Phoenix, El Paso, Las Cruces, and Tucson, and on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. Additionally he recently co-curated an exhibition of five Indigenous artists at Smoke The Moon, a gallery space in Santa Fe, New Mexico that opened during the weekend of Indian Market.