PATCHWORK IS POLITICAL
A Chilean human rights advocate and researcher living in Northern Ireland, Roberta Bacic is the curator of the Conflict Textiles collection, a selection of which are showcased in a new exhibition at Ulster Museum. She discusses her family’s experience as refugees, life under the Pinochet dictatorship, how arpillera textiles became a form of resistance against the regime, and why being in nature makes her content.
Early life
My parents emigrated to Chile after the second world war. They met in a refugee camp in what is now part of Italy. People were sent wherever governments opened their doors. They were very welcome in Chile. When I see how people treat refugees today, I think of my parents.
What did your family teach you?
My father had no education but encouraged me to work hard and respect the teachers.
My parents demanded I be a loyal, 42 AMNESTY WINTER 2024
They would use materials with a lot of emotional attachment – clothes of a ‘disappeared’ person, their shirt, their pajamas
dedicated person who, having no other family, could fend for herself.
Living under General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship... We could not see the dangers. When the dictatorship came around we were not prepared, we had no strategies of how to escape, and people were arrested en masse. From my class in school there were four who were ‘disappeared’, three who were executed and many who had to go into exile.
© Courtesy of Ulster Museum
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