Support Proyecto Comunitario del Maíz's Growth

Faviola here! I am an artist and educator currently based in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. I am the founder of Proyecto Comunitario del Maíz, a project I began about a year ago without imagining how large the project would grow to be.

Project Info:

Proyecto Comunitario del Maíz (Community Maize Project) is an ongoing work utilizing corn husks as a creative media to inspire dialogue centering identity and the intellectual property of craft within the Latinx Diaspora. Through public engagements, participants learn to twine corn husks onto a single corn husk cordage. As of April 2025, this cordage measures 43.5 feet, and has received participant engagement within New York City, Munich Germany, South Tyrol, Italy, Cholula Mexico, and Oaxaca, Mexico.

Why Am I Asking for Funds Now?

The funds raised in this crowd funding initiative will help ensure the project’s expansion to sites of memory and longing within my immediate family’s diaspora: (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru), secure community stipends to compensate project contributors (researchers, workshop assistants, local videographers, etc), and allow it to expand into new communities within the greater Latinx diaspora. Not only will these funds create the opportunity to harvest corn husks and dye matter representative of the times and spaces of my family’s diaspora; but I will also support free natural dye and corn husk twining workshops to incorporate new communities into the project and enable important conversations centering the intersections of diaspora, natural color, international food systems, and craft labor in the form of free natural dye and corn husk twining workshops. Currently, the project’s most time-sensitive goal is participating in Peruvian corn harvest season (April to August), and bringing the project to my aging family members in Central and South America to collaborate in adding to Proyecto Comunitario del Maíz's corn husk cordage.

Upcoming Key Project Goals

-Addition of Andean and Messo-American family members contribution to cordage who are unable to travel due to health and/or international travel restrictions.

-Travel to Mantaro Valley Peru, Santa Tecla El Salvador, and Zacapa Guatemala to collect native corn and local dye matter

-Participation in 2025 Festival de Maiz de San Andres Cholula, Mexico (Corn Festival of San Andres Cholula)

-Participation in Feria Cultural del Añil de Santiago Niltepec, Mexico

(Cultural Anil Festival of Santiago Niltepec, Mexico)

About the Traveling Cord:

The corn husks that currently comprise the cordage are sourced from imported corn husks used to make tamales sold by the pound in Latin American grocery stores in New York, and local mercados of Cholula and Oaxaca Mexico. The colors of the cordage derive from dye of foraged or salvaged natural matter representing spaces and time within my community’s diaspora:

As participants contribute twined corn husks to the collective cordage, they collaborate in producing the material artifact of this global community. An additional artifact of these public engagements is a handbound book, in which project collaborators record their name. This gesture serves to record participants but more importantly undos the tradition of the erasure of labor within craft, highlighting the implicit communal labor of large scale endeavors.

Cost Breakdown:

Travel: Air and ground fare: $6,000

Supplies: Natural dyestuffs and native corns of South Mesoamerica: $1,000

Community Stipends: workshop assistants, researchers, local videographers, etc. : $4,000