Event Details
A selection of attendees at the exhibition launch, 29th August 2018. (Photo: Jim Porter, Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University) |
| Exhibition and associated activities: | Stitched Voices - textila berättelse om politisk våld och motstånd / Textile stories about political violence and resistance |
| Description: | This exhibition centres on textile narratives of struggles against violence, injustice, oppression and forgetting, originating from Chile, Mexico, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Catalonia, Colombia and Germany. The core of the exhibition consists of textiles from the international Conflict Textiles collection.
The exhibition continues the Stitched Voices series, which started as a joint exhibition of arpilleras from the Conflict textiles collection with protest banners from Wales and embroidered handkerchiefs from Mexico as Stitched Voices / Lleisiau wedi eu Pwytho at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales, March-May 2017, and was consequently exhibited with a new Africa focus under the title Stitched Voices: Knowing conflict through textiles in Birmingham, November-December 2017.
In Uppsala, the additional focus of the exhibition will be on pieces remembering the Holocaust. It has been commissioned as part of the Faculty of Arts funded interdisciplinary research node on Conflict and Method at Uppsala University, which explores the different methods in which knowledge about peace, conflict and insecurity is produced. The exhibition is a segment of a broader set of seminar and workshop activities organised by Conflict and Method node during 2018 on the topic of access to the field and knowledge production on war and peace – textiles narratives constituting one of these methods. The exhibition is organised in collaboration with University of Aberystwyth and Fredens Hus.
One of the main goals of this exhibition, which is facilitated by Dr Roland Kostić and colleagues at the research node on Conflict and Method, is to challenge visitor understandings of how violence and conflict are described and explained to domestic and external audiences. In that spirit, the aim is to present visitors with human experience of violence and war that are often obscured by dominant description of wars by news and other experts, who often-times focus on dominant actors, their motives, and interactions, and present suffering in terms of figures of killed, disappeared or displaced people. Textile narratives remind us of the personal stories behind these figures, and amplify the voice of those marginalised from dominant interpretations.
As is presented by this exhibition, the experience of violence, oppression and injustice can be voiced in many different ways beyond writing, sound and video images. This exhibition brings together a selection of unique wall hangings and quilts that have been crafted by a range of people and communities who use textiles as a language to articulate their experiences of loss, solidarity and resistance in the face of human rights violations and war.
An associated programme of activities such as textile workshops, art performances and roundtable discussions about textile art, politics, violence and resistance will take place from August 2018 to April 2019. Events will involve contributions from, and reach out to, Swedish textile artists, community groups interested in textiles and/or peace, schools in Uppsala, as well as Uppsala University student societies and academic departments.
-Exhibition launch takes place at 6pm on Wednesday 29th August, 2018.
-"Creative room", Thursday, 20th of September, 6-8pm and every Thursday thereafter. Working with different materials, participants will have a chance to explore and make their own arpilleras in these sessions.
-Lecture and workshop by Gerillaslöjd (a group based in Stockholm working with textiles and handicrafts to impact society), Thursday 4th October. In the workshop, participants will make balls of yarn which later on will be part of an enormous mat. |
| Commissioned by: | Uppsala University, Sweden, Conflict and Method Node |
| Date(s): | 29th August 2018 - 21st April 2019 |
| Venue: | Fredens Hus, Uppsala, Sweden
Uppsala Slott, ingång/entrance A2, 752 37 Uppsala, Sweden |
| Curator: | Roberta Bacic, assisted by Breege Doherty |
| Facilitator: | Dr Roland Kostić and colleages from the Conflict and Method node, Uppsala University |
| Outcome: | The exhibition and events programme was successful in fostering understanding among politically interested members of public as well as students and academics at Uppsala University of the value of a serious engagement with textiles as methods and sources of studying and understanding political violence and resistance. Through its engagement activities, Stitched Voices furthermore inspired members of the general public to use creative textile (or other) forms to make their voices heard. Finally, the exhibition served a point of departure for new collaborations between Fredens Hus and/or Uppsala University with civil society groups in Uppsala and Sweden.
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| Documents: |
• Preparatory visit report, Uppsala, Mar. 2018 - view
• Storage of textiles pre exhibition - June '18 - view
• list of textiles: Uppsala, 2018 - view
• Exhibition poster: Uppsala, 2018 - view
• Launch invitation - 6pm, 29th August, 2018 - view
• Programme of events: Sept - Nov 2018 - view
• Workshop: Chilean arpillerista, 9th Mar 2019 - view
• Church of Sweden report, May 2019 - view
• Fredens Hus report, May 2019 - view
• Report: Conflict & Method Node, Uppsala Uni. - view
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