Event Details
Arpillera dolls made by participants during the workshop facilitated by Roberta Bacic. (Photo: Jimena Pardo) |
| Workshop: | Keeping Memory Alive |
| Description: | Bordando por la Memoria (Embroidering for Memory) project has been recording events from the Pinochet dictatorship using Memoria Viva archive as a basis. Members of the group were active in the campaign to extradite Pinochet during his arrest in 1998. They have also been involved in creating the archives for Memoria Viva and in the activities organised by the group ECO Memoria.
We will be retelling these stories and intertwining them with the stories behind the pieces made by Bordando por la Memoria. This will be complemented by interweaving the narratives of four arpilleras from the Conflict Textiles collection, which will be on display for the duration of the workshop.
Roberta Bacic will lead an arpillera doll workshop in collaboration with Bordando por la Memoria. The focus of this will be on recovering oral histories from within the group and creating a visual dialogue in response to the arpilleras and the work of Bordando por la Memoria. Please bring some fabric that has some emotional value to you.
Excerpts from the film documentary “Scraps of Life”, by Producer-Director Gayla Jamison will also be shown.
Web links:
Memoria Viva archive (Spanish)
Memoria Viva archive (English)
Cueca Sola / London 2019 (The Cueca sola dance represents those who danced alone waiting for their loved ones who ‘disappeared’ during the Pinochet regime. This commemorative action took place in front of the Chilean Embassy, 11th September 2019.
Dancers: Jimena Pardo, Daniela Pérez and Manuela Mendoza. Interpreters: Daniel Jimenez and Ignacio Rivera).
Sewing to protest in a Chilean prison camp (This 27 minute BBC World Service radio interview, 5th September 2020, documents how activist and medical student Cristina Zamora found a creative way to survive after being taken from her baby daughter by Pinochet's security forces in 1974. It also illustrates the present day work of “Bordando por la Memoria” (Embroidering Memory project), set up by her daughter, Jimena Pardo, to ensure that the horrors of the dictatorship are never forgotten).
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| Commissioned by: | Bordando Por La Memoria |
| Date(s): | 24th May 2019 - 24th May 2019 |
| Venue: | Unite the Union, London
128 Theobalds Road, Holborn, London, UK |
| Curator: | Roberta Bacic |
| Facilitator: | Jimena Pardo & Roberta Bacic |
| Outcome: | Approximately 20 people attended this workshop, comprised primarily of members of ‘Bordando Por La Memoria' and new visitors to the group. It helped to deepen the group's knowledge of Arpilleras made during and post dictatorship, understand the textile language within each piece on display and enabled us to focus on how we could potentially start to archive our work. We discussed potential pieces that the group would like to work on and produced Arpillera dolls with the aim of integrating them into the textile pieces we have already made. The attendees were really moved by the stories and layers of meaning held within each Arpillera and it embedded a strong conviction to continue with the project of ‘Bordando Por la Memoria’.
It also seeded further collaboration with Conflict Textiles, the fruits of which are evident in:
-a presentation by Roberta Bacic Transnational impact of the arpilleramovement at the Stitch for Change: Expression and Togetherness event hosted by De La War Pavilion (DLWP), (14th June 2021)
-a contribution of Conflict Textiles images to the film All In The Same Storm: Patchwork Pandemic Stories.
This event, which was part of UK Refugee week 2021, (14th -20th June), was an associated activity of the exhibition All in the Same Storm, 19th May –5th September 2021. |
| Documents: |
• Workshop notice: 24th May 2019 - view
• Keeping Memory Alive: Workshop report, May 19 - view
• R. Bacic presentation, Refugee week 2021 - view
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