Textile Details

'Carabineros reprimiendo pobladores con carro lanza agua / Police repressing local residents with water cannon', Taller Vicaría de la Solidaridad. (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

This arpillera portrays police repression in a shantytown. We see the powerful water cannon unleashing its torrent against the local residents; we witness the carabineros/police harassing people, we observe people fleeing the area. Incidents of routine state sanctioned repression and violence such as this became the hallmark of the Pinochet dictatorship; an era characterised by detention, disappearance, execution, torture and forced exile.

Thirty five years after it was made in a Vicaría de la Solidaridad workshop, this arpillera made its way to the Conflict Textiles collection via a labyrinth of textile networks. Clara Maria Kecskemethy, who originally owned the piece attended the Poesie des Nähens / The Poetry of Stitching exhibition in Freiburg in 2020 and was so moved by what she experienced that she decided to donate the arpillera to Conflict Textiles collection. She did so via Johanna Menzinger, who commissioned the exhibition. Rosemarie Menzinger carefully stored it in her home until it was dispatched in Spring 2022.

It now begins afresh to denounce human rights violations from the Pinochet era and those perpetrated in other jurisdictions in the current decade.

Textile Detail Image(s)