This is an ode to my grandfathers, Donald Chormicle and Hoyt Inman. Grandpa Hoyt, my maternal grandfather, when he returned to the US after being drafted into Vietnam), performed in gunfighter shows across Southern New Mexico. He’s seen in the photo likely playing the slain sheriff or deputy in the Lincoln Pagant, which still happens annually in the town of Lincoln, NM. After returning from war he took part in these performances while he recovering from the emotional and mental stress of war. When he passed in 2023, I received an archive of photos these performances. Although he never spoke about this time in the context of art, I view his reenactments of historical violence as form of theater and catharsis.

My paternal grandfather, Donny, an enrolled Agua Caliente man, was shot while in police custody in the early 70s in Las Cruces. He died from an overdose at the age of 27, taking drugs to cope with the pain of the wound.
The video piece asserts my body into the historical canon of the New Mexico territory. I seek to highlight the ways that different people in New Mexico engage with gun violence and question the systems that perpetuate further violence in the area, including the way we uphold it through art and culture.

As my body contorts to take the forms that my grandfathers’ bodies may have taken, I close one loop of a cycle of violence that still impacts people from the region today.