| Description: | This arpillera, stitched by Estela Carvalho, was designed and curated by Esther Vital as the poster for her film “Searching Heleny /Cadê Heleny? (2022)”. The stop-motion animated documentary follows Heleny Guariba, a philosopher, theatre director and professor, who was arrested and disappeared in 1971 in an extermination centre which operated during the most violent period of Brazil’s dictatorship (1964 – 1985).
Esther first encountered the arpilleras through curator Roberta Bacic during the exhibition The Art of Survival: International and Irish Quilts, in 2008. Since then, her collaboration with Roberta Bacic and other collectives, groups and institutions, mainly in Brazil, has led to a decade-long commitment to research and activism promoting arpilleras.
The 2011 exhibition Arpilleras e resistênciapolítica no Chile / Arpilleras de la resistenciapolíticaChilena / Arpilleras of Chilean political resistance marked the beginning of ‘Cadê Heleny?’s creative journey. Esther observed the potential of Chilean arpilleras as a point of reference to speak out about repression, and she and Brazilian filmmaker Giuliano Conti came together to produce a film. Inspired by Vivianne Barry’s animated short film Como alitas de Chincol, their vision was to use arpilleras in stop-motion to denounce state violence in Brazil. Heleny Guariba came to Esther’s attention at the suggestion of Kátia Neves (Memorial da Resistencia de Sao Paulo), as her story represented the human experience of enforced disappearance.
In ‘Cadê Heleny?’ the language of arpilleras acts as an aesthetic, conceptual and political framework for the film. It represents the point of view of the arpilleristas and their crafting of memory. Over three years, 20,000 photographs, countless stitches, hours of testimonies, sounds, melodies and the work of hundreds of hands, the team brought the memory of Heleny to life, enriched by their own experiences of existential challenge in our complex current climate.
The film’s poster re-interprets the iconic Victoria Díaz Caro’s arpillera Marcha de las mujeres familiares de detenidos desaparecidos (AFDD). It features Heleny’s image alongside anonymous faces and the always present question: Cadê Heleny?, ¿Dónde están?, Where are they? |
