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Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: We are here at El Museo del Barrio in

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New York in front of a gallery wall covered in arpilleras, and we

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are looking at one at the center of the exhibition. And here we

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have an arpillera workshop, the type of workshop that produced the types

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of work we are looking at. We're in the middle of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship,

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and we are in a very tense and difficult time for politics and

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the economy in Chile. Chloë Courtney: So how does this object relate

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to that political context? There had been in Chile, a history of women

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creating appliqué and embroidered narrative scenes like this one, but in

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the context of the dictatorship, this technique became a way for people

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to process their pain and their grief in a time when there was

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a great risk of censorship and retribution for speaking out. So what we

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see in the center of the composition is a large church with a

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table surrounded by women who are represented as these little stuffed dolls,

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and they're working with thread. And we see on the wall behind them

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a textile with a crochet border and a scene of mountains and a

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sun that is, in fact, very similar to the object as a whole.

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Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: Beyond the building itself, we have the

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town. We see the little houses, mostly female figures going about their

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day, sweeping in front of their houses. We see the representation of nature.

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We have the clever use of patterns with floral designs to represent the

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trees and the leaves. Chloë Courtney: Initially, the creation of

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arpilleras took place through the sponsorship of a Catholic organization

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called the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, the Vicariate of Solidarity. And this

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organization was able to operate because it had the protection of the Archbishop

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of Santiago. And one of their initiatives was to organize sewing circles

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for the sisters and the mothers and the daughters of activists who had

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been detained and disappeared to come together and talk about their missing

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family members and to try to process their experience. One thing they did

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was bring the sweaters and the clothing of their loved ones in order

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to work that into the pictures they were creating. They also did things

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like unravel their own sweaters to source yarn, so we can understand this

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as a real conceptual embedding of their care and their love and their

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grief into these objects. Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: We have a representation

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here of the intimate reality of how the state violence was affecting these

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families. We have a smaller arpillera, and we are inside the family home.

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By the dining room table we see female figures seated, but there around

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the middle ground, we find an empty seat with a question mark on

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it, referencing the person that has disappeared: taken by the state.

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We also see possibly another arpillera on the wall where we have a portrait

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of a male figure, and it says, "Dónde está", where is he?

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They don't have photographies. They don't have journalists that can publish

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what is happening. So now the arpilleristas are taking the documentation

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of their lives and of their emotions and of their experiences in their

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own hands, and they are using a technique that they probably already use

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at home. Chloë Courtney: There are at least three, if not more

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techniques happening in most arpilleras: appliqué, or quilting; embroidery,

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the ornamental stitches used to create the details; and then crochet for

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the borders. At the end of the dictatorship in 1989, there was a

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peaceful transfer of power, and some scholars hypothesize that these communities

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of women that maybe represented the first time that these arpilleristas

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were getting involved with politics empowered them and encouraged them to

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get involved in other ways. They were empowered to say, "I'm not commenting

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on the politics, but as a mother, where's my son? As a sister,

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Where's my brother?" And to use this politics of care to go out

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in the streets and protest and to speak openly, and that this created

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the potential for the transition to a democratic system. As these sewing

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circles continued, the Vicaría de la Solidaridad realized there was a big

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interest in these objects, and they could easily be rolled up and hidden

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in suitcases between layers of clothing. So they developed this network

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of circulation to ship the arpilleras outside of the country secretly.

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And they decided to also establish more workshops. More women got involved

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who were not necessarily directly impacted by the death of a loved one

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or the disappearance of a loved one, but who were nevertheless concerned

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with what was happening. And so a body of themes began to emerge,

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like protests where people are demanding work and justice and food to feed

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their families. We see community efforts at recycling, which was a way to

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earn a little extra money on the urban periphery where people would collect

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cardboard. We see people instituting soup kitchens for their community so

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that they could share resources. There are little bags of rice that really

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make that idea of the soup kitchen come alive.

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Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: It is very interesting how [a] workshop that started as a way to

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support emotionally the women affected directly by the violence of the state

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developed into a way of resistance, into a way for these women to

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have some sort of control in the situation, to be able to denounce

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the violence exerted against their family members against themselves. And

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the Pinochet government was aware of the power of these images,

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and they would try to destroy or hide these arpilleras if they could

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get their hands on it. And the end result of the arpilleras is

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very interesting because there's something very sweet in terms of the aesthetic.

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But when they invite you to look into them, you see that there's

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a subject matter that can be very tense, very heavy with the representation

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of the violence of the state and the consequences of that violence in

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the everyday.