Border Loomers - Incite at Columbia University

Incubated Project

Border Loomers

Mexico-United States border

Border Loomers is a Bisbee, Arizona-based initiative serving binational communities across Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico. Traditional weaving knowledge is disappearing in border communities, and fiber arts education remains largely out of reach. Border Loomers addresses this erasure by creating a binational platform for storytelling through fiber that prioritizes healing through hands-on learning.

The initiative preserves heritage while reimagining it as a tool for resilience and cross-cultural collaboration. Through community workshops, artisan interviews, and public installations, Border Loomers amplifies the voices of borderland artisans. Workshops are led by elders and queer makers, and use portable frame looms to host free sessions in public spaces on both sides of the border, engaging artists, youth, and elders in fiber art rooted in cultural memory and place.
 

Team Lead

  • 0
    Fernando Serrano

    Fernando Serrano is a queer Mexican-American artist and cultural worker based in Bisbee, Arizona. An active and proud member of Central School Project (CSP), Fernando is deeply committed to community-building through accessible artmaking and mutual support. His artistic practice is rooted in printmaking, textiles, ceramics, metalsmithing, and experimental processes, and he believes strongly in the preservation and evolution of traditional craft.

More Projects

  • go to Embodied Earth
    Embodied Earth
    Breaking through climate knowledge silos with collaborative, interactive public performances driven by research. Part of Assembling Voices
  • go to Global Investigative Journalism Oral History
    Global Investigative Journalism Oral History
    Recording, preserving, and presenting the histories of the investigative journalism movement. Funded by Incite Institute
  • go to How Does the Brain Control Social Recognition and Social Memory?
    How Does the Brain Control Social Recognition and Social Memory?
    By pioneering naked mole-rats as a new model for neuroscience, the project aims to uncover mechanisms of social memory more relevant to humans than traditional mouse studies. Part of the Hard Questions Grant
  • go to Documenting as Resistance
    Documenting as Resistance
    Resisting displacement in America's most diverse neighborhood through socially-engaged public art. Part of Assembling Voices