PHOTO LEFT
A Chilean arpillera depicting a group of women who have chained themselves in front of the Congress in protest against the actions of the Pinochet regime Photo Martin Melaugh © Conflict Textiles
PHOTO RIGHT
Ana Zlatkes’ representation of Conflict Textiles curator Roberta Bacic, who, with Mapuche poet Jaime Huenún Villa, co-produced the 2023 book Arpilleras Poéticas. Photo Martin Melaugh © Conflict Textiles
What is an arpillera? In English terms you would say it is a patchwork. It’s all made by hand. Mainly women but also a few men decided to voice what was happening to them through arpilleras.
They would use materials with a lot of emotional attachment – clothes of a ‘disappeared’ person, their shirt, their pyjamas. And in the process of creation they could relate to the absent person.
How did Chile’s arpilleras become such a powerful form of resistance against the Pinochet regime?
Between 1975 and 1979 churches and organisations such as Amnesty acquired them and brought them to the world – they became a way of spreading news. But then the government realised they were very powerful and they were
proscribed. But women continued to produce them and the solidarity movement had to look for new ways to transport them.
What makes you angry? I am less angry than when I was younger. It takes too much time to get out of the anger.
And happy?
I live by the sea in Northern Ireland and have a lot of nature that gives me the space to see that one can connect to simple things, which gives you courage to face the rest of life.
Best advice? Don’t rely on hope, thinking that hope will solve something. Take action.
Roberta Bacic curates the Conflict
Textiles collection. A selection of arpilleras from the collection is currently on display at Ulster Museum. Amnesty UK partners with Conflict Textiles on its events, including one to mark International Human Rights Day.
ulstermuseum.org/stories/conflict- textiles
Find out more about Conflict
Textiles at
cain.ulster.ac.uk/ conflicttextiles
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