Embroidering from the Heart: Textile Artivism in Latin America

Abstract

The synchronic analysis of the contemporary cultural life in the Latin American communicative community shows that the art of embroidery, traditionally transmitted from generation to generation mainly by women, undergoes significant changes in terms of values. Embroidery has come to be perceived not as an applied art but as one of the fine arts as it has evolved from a simple decorative process toward the transmission of meanings, emotions, and ideas through methods of working with fabrics and threads specific to a particular nation. Since the second half of the 20th century, the «intimate» art of embroidery has become collective. It has spread beyond people’s homes to be practiced in garment workshops, hence fostering a space of communication between artisans and allowing them to work together, in unison. The public space created around embroidery gradually goes beyond workshops and begins to embrace broader sectors, encouraging numerous dialogues, namely those between seamstresses and authorities, between artisans from different workshops, from different towns, cities and countries. By exposing injustice and the denial of human rights embroidery has become an international instrument of social and political struggle. The authors of this study examine embroidery within the framework of Latin American artivism and define it as a traditional form of protest art in the region. The diachronic analysis of Latin American embroidery of the past century is instrumental in shedding new light on certain events of regional history. Thus, embroidery has become an invaluable encyclopedia of people’s heroism in their struggle against inequality and oppression.

Keywords

• artivism
• actionism
• protest art
• latin america
• embroidery