smoke the moon is pleased to present Say Uncle, a solo show of photography by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, (Agua Caliente Band Of Cahuilla Indians, Lineal Descendant) . Chormicle is a lens-based artist based in Las Cruces, NM. Say Uncle is an intimate portrait of the reciprocal tie between a land and its people. 

The photographs on view are the culmination of 4 years of image making throughout the Indian Canyons of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation near so-called Palm Springs, CA. Chormicle and his uncle, Michael Dean Chormicle (Agua Caliente Band Of Cahuilla Indians, Enrolled Member) walked the traditional migration routes of the Agua Caliente people. The project began simply: the photos served as a way of tethering a moment to its vast legacy and land, a record of time spent with family in their ancestral place. 

The photographs that emerged throughout Chormicle’s time with his uncle are both an ingress and an egress to the greater spiral of history. They touch something sacred within their form: the ability to see and be seen, to illuminate and obscure. Chormicle’s work captures a dual nature:  light filtering through the largesse of shadowed canyons, cracks and pools in the earth that feel like portals to a deeper realm. 

His uncle appears as a sort of guide in many scenes, leading the viewer through a forest of towering palms or reaching out to lay a hand on rock or water. As the project unfurled, the significance of the photographic subject became more fraught. Though all his photographs retain a pensive tone, intermingled with edenic vantages are scenes that capture an unsettling outside influence on the land. A bird’s eye view reveals windmills gridding the desert below, a plane cuts its trail through the bright blue sky. 

Chormicle’s photographs have an all knowing mystery to them. They are on a journey that follows an interior compass: merging the spirit of a place and its human and non-human forms. Say Uncle tells a story that meditates in the pools between past, present and future. The small moment may briefly become the whole world.