Based in East Elmhurst, Queens, Mazorca Colectiva builds community with immigrants and Indigenous peoples through ancestral practices that center peacekeeping, motherhood, caretaking, land cultivation, and weaving. The collective draws its cultural practices from Muisca, Lakota, Diné, Nahua, Mexica, Arhuaco, and Andean cosmovisions. This exhibition shares the collective’s recent work through photography, video, weaving, and text.  

For Mazorca Colectiva, community building amidst a backdrop of trauma, violence, and displacement is akin to nixtamalization, or the traditional Meso-American practice of processing corn. After the corn grows from seed to mazorca, it is de-seeded, ground, and softened into masa or dough. Looking to corn as a teacher, Mazorca Colectiva follows a similar pathway of transformation through their community circles that center caregivers and resignify masculinity while providing space for storytelling,  weaving textiles, growing native plants in their Peace Garden, and connecting with the land through ceremony. The photographs and videos in this exhibition bear witness to the methods of healing and intergenerational learning that the collective has nurtured over the past several years. 

For their Indigenous Practice Studio (IPS) commission at the Queens Museum, Mazorca Colectiva wove textiles on looms, incorporating fabric, cords, ropes, wires, and fibrous material sourced from all around the city. As community members came together to weave, they also shared stories with one another. A nixtamalization occurred during this process: as they wove the trama, or wefts (horizontal threads), through the urdimbre, or warps (vertical threads), individual actions and emotions became entangled, embodied, and absorbed into the communal tapestry. Mazorca Colectiva’s process demonstrates how community is seeded, nourished, and interconnected, providing a space of mutual care. Additional woven textiles from the community looms will be exhibited in the Skylight Gallery, opening November 23, 2025.

Mazorca Colectiva’s core members for this project: Grimaldi Baez, Nicolás Linares Sánchez, Luisa Fernanda Mojica, Jazmin Pérez Fernández, Ana Puente Flores, and Andrea Silva.

Entre Semilla y Fibra: Threads of Memory, Seeds of Land  is presented as part of the Indigenous Practice Studio (IPS) Commissioning Program. The program is organized in partnership with Tecumseh Ceaser, artist and cultural consultant, and Eva Mayhabal Davis, cultural advocate and curator, together with Queens Museum staff members. Curatorial support is provided by Lindsey Berfond, Assistant Curator and Studio Program Manager, and Sarah Cho, Assistant Curator.