IF YOU WERE to merge all people into one photographic portrait, you’d expect a certain density from the layering of faces. As more get added, the darker you’d imagine it would get. Instead, you get a blurred image that’s light and ephemeral, like the whisper of a fading memory.
Axle Contemporary, Santa Fe’s mobile art gallery, proves this with their long-running project E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), in which they invited New Mexicans to sit for portrait sessions while holding objects of personal value. The portraits were then plastered to the outside of the mobile art van.
“It started here in Santa Fe as sort of a one-shot deal,” says Axle co-founder Matthew Chase-Daniel. Back in 2012, he and Axle partner Jerry Wellman were invited to do a one-day installation as part of SITE Santa Fe’s Time-Lapse exhibition. “We decided, based on the theme of the show, to take photos of people over the course of a month and layer them and blend them into one face. We had no idea what that would look like.”
Axle co-founder Matthew Chase-Daniel.
Photograph courtesy of Frankie DiAngelis.
Two years later, Axle Contemporary created a version of E Pluribus Unum based in Albuquerque for 516 Arts and then started a third exhibition when Manny Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum, invited the gallery to the Navajo Nation.
That sparked a motivation to gas up the gallery and hit the highways, covering as much New Mexico territory as possible and reaching communities in every county. Each iteration resulted in a book, which Axle Contemporary donated to local libraries in the communities they visited. The intimate black-and-white photos fill the pages, with the combined image on the cover.
But with E Pluribus Unum: Mogollon, an exhibition of portraits at New Mexico State University Art Museum in Las Cruces through August 2, Axle Contemporary has reached the end of the road. For the sixth and final iteration of the series, the 850 photos on display were taken in Belén, Deming, Truth or Consequences, Magdalena, Pie Town, Acoma, Las Cruces, and beyond.
The mobile gallery at Acoma.
Photograph courtesy of Frankie DiAngelis.
“We’ve covered the entire state, all the way from Lordsburg to Lovington,” Wellman says, noting that Axle is actively placing digital collections and printed materials from the project in archives throughout New Mexico.
“We show up, and people get it,” he says. They arrive with personal items that range from guns and knives to teddy bears and lockets with pictures of loved ones. “They love to participate.”
In exchange for helping Axle create a merged photograph of the people in the region, each participant received their individual printed portrait.
“It becomes very evident that we’re all people, wanting to get to know each other,” Wellman says. “We’re all curious. I hope that carries through in the portraits.”
The Hood celebrates local art, makers, and culture in Las Cruces. Artists, designers, and visitors come together in this one-of-a-kind creative space.
E Pluribus Unum: Mogollon
Through August 2, University Art Museum, New Mexico State University, 1308 E. University Ave., Las Cruces; 575-646-2545
