This spring, Dartmouth will host La Trenza/The Braid, a community-based art project that brings together migration studies, visual art, storytelling, and collective making. The residency features artist Mónica Lozano, co-creator of the project, and photographer Jorge Carlos Álvarez, who will document its development across campus and community spaces.
Supported by the 2026 Hop Integration Grant, Professors Israel Reyes and María Clara de Greiff lead Hands That Speak, Art That Heals: La Trenza/The Braid and Intercultural Health and Wellness. The project builds on arts-based initiatives at Dartmouth that engage migration, labor, mental health, and intercultural dialogue. It invites students, faculty, and community members to consider migration not only as border crossing, but as movement through memory, labor, identity, and belonging.
La Trenza/The Braid is an evolving installation that weaves together the stories of people in transit—immigrants, asylum seekers, displaced families, and others shaped by migration. Originating with objects recovered in the desert of Ciudad Juárez, the project grows through participant contributions of personal items and stories. Braiding becomes a method of connection, linking histories, bodies, and places into a shared human archive.
At Dartmouth, the project explores how arts-based practices can support mental health and community wellness. Through participatory weaving, photography, and object-based storytelling, the installation treats contributed items as material records of migration, labor, loss, and endurance.
The residency includes two public events:
- “What Remains Collective” — Sunday, April 19 at 6:30 p.m., Occom Commons (dinner provided). Participants are invited to bring an object reflecting movement or transition, or use provided materials to contribute to the braid.
- Class workshop — LATS 20.13: Migrant Lives and Labor in the Upper Valley, with Professor Douglas Moody, 2:25 p.m., Dartmouth Hall.
Photographer Jorge Carlos Álvarez will document the installation through still photography focused on the expressive power of hands in motion, creating a visual archive of both the process and final work.
La Trenza/The Braid asks what remains—what we carry, remember, and create together—bringing that question to life through art, research, and community collaboration.
For more information about the artists, visit Mónica Lozano’s website and Jorge Carlos Álvarez’s portfolio.
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