Discipline of Spanish introduces Roberta Bacic lecture on ‘Arpilleras: Textile Language of Testimony, Resistance and Memory’

Arpilleras: Textile Language of Testimony, Resistance and Memory.

Roberta Bacic will introduce the popular art form of ‘arpilleras’, pictures made from scraps of cloth, employed in Chile under Pinochet as a means of documenting human rights abuses by the regime, and  bearing witness to censored acts of resistance. Her talk will follow the journey of this art form to sites of conflict around the world, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, and describes some the ways in which it continues to be used as a form of testimony, protest and reconciliation.

Brief Biography for Roberta Bacic:

Roberta Bacic is a Chilean Human Rights advocate and researcher who since 2007 has curated more than 90 international exhibitions of arpilleras and associated events. Over time, these

exhibitions have expanded from arpilleras from Pinochet’s Chile to include textiles narratives of loss, resistance, protest and healing from around the world. You can access her work

http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/  which holds and documents

her Conflict Textiles collection.

She resides in Northern Ireland.