Marcia Harvey Isaksson presents a new work in the Borås Art Biennial 2026 at the Textile Museum of Sweden. The installation Stretching the Cord (2026) brings together the artist’s collection of seven looms from different cultures, places, and times into a circle of ancient wisdom.

The title of the work refers to a ceremony associated with Seshat, the ancient Egyptian goddess of writing, measurement, and architecture. This ritual was performed at the foundation of sacred buildings, symbolising the precise alignment of structures with the cosmos. The installation becomes a spiritual space commemorating the makers of fabric that have come before and those who will come after.

The cord that binds the looms together is a handspun mohair yarn from the Karoo in South Africa. Legend has it that mohair came to South Africa in 1838, when the Sultan of Turkey sent a small group of Angora goats as a gift. Decades earlier, Merino sheep had been introduced to the Cape, gifted to the Dutch by the king of Spain. Some of the sheep ended up in the British Colony of Australia and helped make Australia the world’s leading producer of fine wool - a testament to how materials and technologies have travelled the world.

The installation also includes Swedish wool, handspun by the artist. Once a central yarn in Sweden, alongside linen, wool gradually lost its role due to the rise of imported yarns.

Much like the process of handspinning yarn, some loom designs have remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years. For example, the warp-weighted loom has existed for around 9,000 years and dominated European weaving from the Bronze Age through the Viking Age, while the West African narrow-strip loom has been used for at least 900 years and the small rigid heddle in Sápmi for possibly 1,000 years. In Harvey Isaksson’s work, the looms act as witnesses to the rise and fall of industry, and the constant flow of knowledge - linking the ancient past to an unforeseeable future.

In her work, Marcia Harvey Isaksson (born 1975 in Harare, Zimbabwe; lives in Stockholm, Sweden) uses textile techniques as a vehicle to explore our shared cultural heritage and site-specific narratives.