Textile Details

'Marcha de las mujeres de los mineros / March of the miners’ wives, daughters and sisters', by TL, Mujeres Creativas workshop. (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

This arpillera, by TL, is a replica of an original made in a Mujeres Creativas workshop in 1985. Here we can see clearly that TL, like other arpilleristas from Peru, adopted much from the Chilean tradition. As Cooke, Zetlin & MacDowell observe in the 2005 Weavings of War exhibition catalogue: "The Peruvian artists borrowed much from the Chilean arpilleristas: the idea of using pictorial patchwork as a vehicle for political activism, the use of church parishes for workshops, and even the use of the same overseas trading relationships with human rights organisations and international arts groups... They made an unfamiliar textile form their own, contributing boldly graphic compositions and new techniques" (p21).

In 2011, María Herrera in the course of a phone call about her work stated that marching was one of the ways Peruvian men and women protested against appalling working conditions and human rights violations. With regard to this arpillera, she said: "Many men, women and children do these sacrifice marches, walking for many days from where they come from and heading to Lima so as to protest against the shameful working conditions in the mining camps. Once in Lima they collected money and organised soup kitchens in order to survive. They also have to face repression. I felt the need to document this".

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