Las Cruces artist chosen for Genius Loci series

Marcus Xavier Chormicle

Among the artists selected for exhibition in the 2024-25 Genius Loci series at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso is Las Cruces photographic and multimedia artist Marcus Xavier Chormicle.

The exhibition series “explores the ways in which our local borderlands context informs artists’ practices,” according to the Rubin Center’s website. The Center, housed at the University of Texas at El Paso, “supports artist-led and community-centered explorations of contemporary life from the US-Mexico border,” the website continues. The Genius Loci series is funded with grant support from the Mellon Foundation.

Visual artists within a 100-mile radius of the university were eligible to submit for the series, except for currently enrolled students at any educational institution.

Marcus Chormicle’s work, per a news release, “focuses on family, memory and the intersections of class, race and history in the U.S. southwest.” He is a Las Cruces High School graduate who earned a journalism degree from Arizona State University and also studied digital marketing and studio art, per archived reports.  For two years, he founded and operated in Las Cruces the Cristian Anthony Vallejo Memorial Gallery, or CAV, named in memory of a deceased younger cousin. It held its final exhibition last summer. Per the Rubin Center, Chormicle recently completed a residency at Light Work, a photography center in Syracuse, N.Y.

Chormicle was selected by a professional jury along with the duo Un Dique, consisting of Octavio Castrejón and Alonso Robles of Ciudad Juárez; and Cynthia Gutierrez-Krapp of El Paso.

Precise dates for the Genius Loci exhibitions were not immediately available.