Political Textiles

Transforming threads of resistance:  political arpilleras & textiles by women from Chile and around the world, an exhibition curated by Roberta Bacic and organized by Leah Wing.

Women’s creative resistance to state violence and human rights violations are reflected in these forty textiles from a number of regions across the globe.

Political arpilleras were born in Chile as a response to human rights violations during the Pinochet dictatorship, when women sewed the stories of those who faced torture, were imprisoned, and were disappeared; they recorded these experiences of daily life resisting their silencing and naming their realities, demanding the truth and the economic means to care for their families during the repression.   These arpilleras

“have demonstrated resistance: resistance against poverty by creating a grassroots export; resistance against the regime by telling the story of daily life under Pinochet… making sewing an act of subversion” (Roberta Bacic).

This exhibition also highlights how women in conflict zones in the Global South impacted women in conflict zones in the Global North as this form of artistic resistance and creative response to state violence spread.

 

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