This is the first arpillera by textile artist Heidi Drahota. She created it after participating in several arpillera workshops connected to International arpillera exhibitions, 2009 – 2011. For Heidi "Arpilleras are like a diary. … and like every diary they are personal documents."
This piece is: “[my] personal expression as a German profoundly affected by the Second World War.” In the top section, Heidi, inspired by the arpillera doll technique used by Chilean women, depicts teenager Anna Frank at work on her diary during the period 1942 to 1944, when she and her family lived in hiding in Amsterdam, during the German occupation of the Netherlands.
Directly below she portrays the historical context in which this happened. Her vivid images of peoples‘ glasses, the presence of guards and dishevelled yellow stars reminds us of the genocide inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews during World War II, a fate which befell Anna Frank and several family members.
The third section links the historical and current context. The end of World War II and the decline in Nazism is symbolised by brown helmet shapes, whilst the grey brickwork portrays the emergence of the UN declaration of human rights, the building blocks for a more equal world.
Worryingly, on the bottom right we see a gradual rise in Neo Nazism, reminding us that the issues of discrimination, denial of human rights and genocide faced by Anna Frank in the 1940s, is still a threat for children and young people many decades later.
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