Arpilleras: Market Scenes and Political Protest

Market Scene arpillera from Earthlink Handcrafts, $45
from the artisans from CIAP Peru
This beautifully crafted Arpillera is made by a group of women
from the Kuyanakuy Artisans Assoc.
They live in the marginalised areas of Lima
This scene depicts their earlier village life
before they became refugees from the civil war of the 1980s.

I spent my junior year of college in South America; one semester in an Urban Studies program based in Bogota, Colombia and the second at the Lutheran seminary in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Bogota has a fascinating museum that showcases traditional crafts from the area, Museo de Artes y Tradiciones Populares. Housed in a former monastery, Colombia's rich heritage of weaving, ceramic art, basketry and woolen products are displayed with honor.


I saw my first arpilleras in this museum, 3-d appliqued tapestries of village life. The museum had a couple of enormous pieces, covering a whole wall with people engaged in every kind of activity, all carefully stuffed, embroidered and brightly clothed. The scenes evoked happiness, life, and productivity. That was over twenty years ago and since then, the technique has spread. I don't know which country started it, but arpilleras are also found in Peru, Ecuador and Chile and have become increasingly more diverse in their themes. Lucuma Designs, a Fair Trade Organization, carries a huge selection of beautifully crafted arpilleras, from traditional designs to wild dinosaurs and other themes.

Fruit Market, $179

Dinosaurs, $167

A couple of years after graduating from college, I worked for Chicago Uptown Ministry, a Lutheran project that provides direct service to low income people in one of Chicago's most populated and ethnically diverse neighborhoods. One of my roles there was to provide different craft activities to the people we serviced. I introduced the arpilleras to a group of women and taught them how to make the 3-d images. Then, I asked them to each pick a window from their apartments and try to translate what they saw on to fabric. I regret not having taken photos of their work... the results were absolutely wonderful. The best one was done by a Native American woman who already had some sewing skills. She had a part of the MacDonald's arch showing up in her window, lots of interior details, and she even cut pieces off of her actual curtains to use them in her little tapestry!

I find this whole process very interesting. Women who knew very little about South America could relate to these pictures and see how to speak of their own lives. And, Latin women, as well, have taken arpilleras beyond the market scenes or touristy vistas to document moments of tragedy, despair and outrage. This has been especially true in Chile, where women would meet clandestinely to sew together as a protest against human rights violations under the rule of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989).

El Exilio en Chile documents some of the experiences and positions many exiles took during this time. The arpillera above shows people fleeing the country and going into exile in Argentina, Uruguay, the United States and other countries. The Needlework Manifesto, a fellow blogger, has this Chilean arpillera on her blog:

The piece asks, "Where are the detained who have disappeared?" Like many other South American countries during the 1970's, Chile lost thousands of its youth to torture and death for speaking up against its dictatorial regime.

Professor Marjorie Agosín, a Jewish exile from Chile, has received many awards for her work in human rights and her literary achievements. She is a professor in the Spanish Department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Over the years, she collected many of these protest arpilleras and compiled them into a book, "Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Life: The Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974-1994". Amazon's description of the book:

"This book tells the story of ordinary women living in terror and extreme poverty under General Pinochet's oppressive rule in Chile (1973–1989) and how their lives did and did not change following his reign. These women defied the military dictatorship by embroidering their sorrow on scraps of cloth, using needles and thread as one of the boldest means of popular protest and resistance in Latin America. The arpilleras they made—patchwork tapestries with scenes of everyday life and memorials to their disappeared relatives—were smuggled out of Chile and brought to the world the story of their fruitless searches in jails, morgues, government offices, and the tribunals of law for their husbands, brothers, and sons.

Marjorie Agosín, herself a native of and exile from Chile, has spent over twenty years interviewing the arpilleristas and following their work. She knows their stories intimately and knows, too, that not one of them has ever found a disappeared relative alive. Still, many of them maintain hope and continue to make their arpilleras. Even though the dictatorship ended in 1989 and democracy returned to Chile, no full account of the detained and disappeared has ever been offered. This book includes a history of the women's movement, testimonies from the women in their own words, and, for the first time, full-color plates of their beautiful, moving, and ultimately hopeful arpilleras. Anyone interested in the history of contemporary Latin America will want to read this powerful story."

The book has a forward by Isabel Allende, one of my favorite authors and another Chilean exile. She wrote a book, "My Invented Country" which looks at her time in Chile and has a fascinating insight to the concept of memory, reality, and history.

Most of us will not have such sorrowful stories or memories to tell through our work. We each do, however, have our own specific experience. I take two lessons from this post for myself: art is a powerful voice in society and in everything I make, I try to make it my own. Whether abstract or figurative, decorative, functional or visual, every piece we contribute reflects a collective voice of our experience as a people, moving forward with our own stories in the larger market of life.

Related items you can buy through Amazon:

Arpilleras: Market Scenes and Political Protest

A Maze in the Amazon: The Shipibo-Conibo Path in Textiles

I first learned about the Shipibo through their beautiful ceramics. Fine black lines create mazes of pattern on white backgrounds, framed by the red tierra cotta clay. As I was exposed to more of their work, I saw that those designs were also abundant in their textiles, as facial tattoos and as wall art on the outside of their houses.

A Different Approach carries Shipibo pottery wholesale.
They are a fair trade organization that support many pottery
efforts in Central and South America.

Many authors refer to the Shipibo in conjunction with another indigenous group, the Conibo, as one people, the Shipibo-Conibo, as the two have merged through intermarriage. They live along the Amazon River and its tributaries in small villages, although many cities like Iquitos and Lima now have Shipibo communities as well. Estimates number the population at 35,000 people in 300 villages. As with most indigenous groups around the world, the Shipibo-Conibo face the old story of displacement due to logging (Cultural Survival has an article about mahogany culling in the region), climate change, and assimilation into the mainstream popular culture. Yet, they have been able to find a better balance than many other groups through their profound knowledge of medicinal herbs, shamanism, and production of handicrafts and textiles.

Several permaculture efforts have networked with them in an effort to help them produce better foods locally, decreasing their dependency on trade. Ecoversity describes some of the challenges they have experienced in reaching remote communities while other less isolated groups have enjoyed significant gains through participating in events such as the Santa Fe International Art Market.

Photo by Howard G. Charing
See his pdf article, Communion with the Infinite, for more information
on the textiles and their spiritual significance.

Shipibo-Conibo textiles are closely connected to their religious context. The World Culture Encyclopedia has a page description of Shipibo belief. Boiled down to one paragraph, they believe that spirits or gods live up in the sky which can be accessed by the "vegetalista" or herbalist (shaman). Western medicine is fine for treating diseases of the flesh, but the vegetalista will know how to cure the spiritual maladies. Shipibo cosmology translates itself into art through the vision of being part of a larger whole. Dan James Pantone, Ph.D., has an excellent article which explains some of this dynamic. I thought this insight was especially interesting:

"The art form of the Shipibos is little understood by the outside world. To the artists, is not something that they are taught, rather they are inspired to create their distinctive patterns. The women, rather than the men in the village, are the artists. Commonly the women will work together to produce a single piece. Each of the women seems to be moved by the same artistic spirit and one woman can interrupt her work and then assign another woman in the village to complete a particular piece. When the artwork is finished, the resulting piece will look like it was made by a single artist. This really is communal art at its finest."

Photo by Lorna Li

It reminds me a bit of quilting bees, yet if you watch how these textiles are made, it's a little more abstract in design than most quilting patterns. The textiles also call up Aborigine work to me. Instead of dots marking a pathway, lines move you through the piece.

Vintage 1960's Shipibo Textile, by Patina Green

There are two main forms of the textiles, both very different in their final impact. The simple white and black textiles are painted with vegetable dyes, resulting in stark geometric contrasts. The second uses embroidery. Although the patterns are also geometric, the use of color introduces the potential for walking on the wild side of the maze. Designs may explode with clashing oranges and blues, while others may bring calm and a sense of peace with greens and purples.

Photo by Sabine Rittner

"This is the "Wayvana" pattern:
the wavy lines mimicking each other are people eating together
underneath a tree (the little square in the middle)." Willem Malten

Sabine Rittner, of Heidelberg, Germany, spent several months with the Shipibo in 2005. Coming from a music therapy background, she researched how the vegetalista or shaman approached healing in their context. She quotes:

`Every human being possesses a body pattern that is formed by his energy flow and is not visible to the average villager but to the shaman. When the competent and experienced shaman uses the plant in question, then he gets insights into a patient's energy field and flow of life force, energetic disturbances and blockades. Shipibo shamans say that the ayahuasqua drink helps them to see through a patient's body, like x-rays. However, they see neither skeleton nor organs but rather the disturbances and blockades in energetic balance. The exact site of the illness may be located in this way. The ayahuasqua plant permits shamans also to contact the spirit world. Above all the so-called `masters of powerful trees' support a shaman in his therapeutic work. These patterns resemble the style of the patterns we admire on earthen vessels and textiles. But according to the shamans' descriptions they are much finer and more complex. If a person falls ill in the course of his life this becomes visible in an imbalance, a distortion, an unclearness or agitation of his body pattern. Ayahuasca helps a shaman to see the pattern and evaluate it. He tries to reconstruct the pattern through songs transmitted to him in his ayahuasca induced state by the masters of the trees. For the Shipibo these songs are sacred and healing, they are also called `pattern medicine'. When a shaman sings his therapeutic song, then rhythm and intensity of the song show their effects in a patient's body pattern. While the shaman's healing song leaves the breath of his mouth in a linear and rhythmic flow, it forms a fine pattern that becomes embedded in the patient's body and causes harmony in the energy balance and the mind.' (From: Gebhard-Sayer/Illius, 1991).

Photo by Sabine Rittner

She concludes her fascinating article with a note on what she learned:

"Everything I tried to present in this paper is the result of momentary impressions. Despite written versions of the Shipibo language, theirs is an oral culture living in the flow of `improvisation', that is, being recreated all the time. There is the continuity of a common history, a tradition passed on in tales, myths, shapes, colours and music. But this is the art of creation that lives anew every day, every moment, with each listener. The stories told in ethnological books are, strictly speaking, only true in the moment of telling, not for the next day, not for the next ayahuasquero, not for the next village. It was a lesson and a challenge for me to discuss with the Shipibo this kind of `permanent impermanence' that has more contradictions than consistencies.

My intention was not to idealize the Shipibo culture. Notwithstanding our postmodern longing for the `original' and `authentic', the life of the Shipibo is full of existential problems, with unbelievable material poverty and tremendous social wealth. I am deeply grateful to them for accepting me as a guest and permitting me insights into their everyday lives and spiritual healing traditions."

On that note, perhaps we should all give up some thanks for our own roles as guests on this earth and for our impermanent contributions to the maze we each walk in.






Here are some Shipibo products available on Amazon and Novica:

A Maze in the Amazon: The Shipibo-Conibo Path in Textiles

The Costume Page, A Most Wonderful Resource

Have you heard of The Costume Page? Are you interested in clothing design, apparel throughout the ages? Do you have many, many, many hours at your disposal to explore this extensive list? The Costume Page is a resource that compiles links to websites with costume related information. Julie Zetterberg Sardo, who developed the site, states:

"Welcome to The Costume Page, my personal library of costume and costuming-related links. I'm sharing it for the benefit of those who study and/or make costumes: costumers, students, historical re-enactors, science fiction fans, professionals, amateurs, dancers, theatrical costumers, trick-or-treaters, writers, researchers, and all those interested in fashion, textile art, and costume history.

There are over 1,000 unique links listed on these pages. Some of them cover more than one area of interest. I recommend that you browse through all sections of The Costume Page if you don't immediately find what you're seeking. I've tried to cross-reference where possible, but you're likely to find some additional gems if you dig!"

The subjects are divided into the following topics:

Home | Reference | Museums | History | Topics | Ethnic | Theatrical
Organizations | Events | Schools | Instructions
Halloween | Other Lists
Materials | Accessories | Costumes

Each of them opens the door to a vast compilation of links. Of course, my favorite is the Ethnic tab. This one is divided into:

Africa | Asia & India | Western Europe | Eastern Europe and Siberia
Near & Middle East | North, Central & South America | Pacific Islands

The linked sites are varied and include documentation of historical costumes, how-to pages, and ethnographic information. Photocollect deals with old photographs such as the Japanese warrior below. They target museums and private collectors as clients.


Macedonian Folk Embroidery offers samples of embroidered clothing and patterns such as the one below:


Maya Adventure has a page on woven symbolism in Mayan textiles.

Those three are just a small sampling of what is available in the ethnic section. There is a lot more on Japanese kimono, Indian saris, Middle Eastern garb, African wraps and a huge section on European costumes.

The Costume Page is especially rich with information on Western historical fashion. The Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Medieval links are fascinating! Footwear of the Middle Ages is one example of an excellent overview of how shoes were made, what tools were used, and what the various designs meant in that period.


One of the Paducah artists had a costume party last year with a 1960's theme. Another one used a flapper theme. I used this site as an idea place to figure out what to wear for both parties. Sometimes you just need to look at some good images to get some inspiration. This is the place to come.

There are also many links that have excellent educational resources for kids (or adults who like to play...). David Claudon Paper Dolls has a huge selection of designs from all over the world through the ages. My sister is home schooling her kids and I can just imagine her using these as teaching aids.

The Costume Page is an invaluable resource for theater people, designers, historians, and anybody just curious enough to poke around the site. I can only thank Julie Zetterberg Sardo for putting such an excellent collection at our disposal. Thank you for all your hard work!

The Costume Page, A Most Wonderful Resource

Bazaar Brazil: Bringing Fair Trade from South to North

Brazil has had a long tradition of handicrafts. Most of the larger cities and metropolitan areas have what we used to call, "Feira Hippie", or Hippie Fairs. Many of the craft skills were brought by European immigrants, but these melded with both African and Indigenous influence into new interpretations of the crafts that are identifiably Brazilian. For example, the Portuguese brought bobbin lace making as an art with them during the colonial days. The skill spread up and down the coast among fishing villages, especially in the NorthEast. Lace techniques were used to make fishing nets, hammocks, bed spreads, curtains and other household items. In the 1970's, Brazilian artisans enjoyed a true renaissance in craft mediums. The craft fairs really were populated with the hippie generation trying to make a living from their cottage industries.

Imports from Indonesia, China and other countries almost devastated craft production as they could undersell the products of local artisans. However, with the growth of fair trade projects around the world and increased opportunities through online marketing and sales, Brazilian artisans found supportive audiences both at home and abroad.

Brazilians have three things in abundance that make fair trade products viable: excellent raw materials, an abundance of rural and urban poor who need work, and the entrepreneurial spirit that is necessary for project success. Bazaar Brazil embodies these elements in their wonderful selection of Brazilian fair trade crafts. Located in Redwood City, California (US), the shop is owned by two Brazilians who are doing their share to represent these artisans:

Mara Sallai is from the same area I grew up in. My brother was born in her city of Londrina. We had a brainstorming session trying to figure out if we had any acquaintances in common. We didn't, but we do share a love for Brazil and a hope that these crafts will empower the people they represent.

Bazaar Brazil focuses in on products that recycle waste and that are made by truly disenfranchised people. Many of the artisans are handicapped, have served time in prison, or live in areas where there is either no or very low-paying work.

Coasters, boxes and other objects are made from recycled wood by people with down syndrome.

Recycled polyester that are cast offs from large factories are made into textured pillows and throws.

Two of Mara's favorite products are banana fiber vessels and the Baniwa baskets. She describes both in terms of their local economic importance.

Baniwa from the Rio Negro- weavers of tradition

"The Baniwa basketry are made of "Aruma fiber" and have a sustainable feature - each cut fiber creates seeds for another two or three. The fibers need to be dyed before they are cut in under steam; the dyes are 100% natural.

Patterns of the baskets express their language and symbolize their environment. Authentic and without the touch of the western influence, the weaving tradition becomes a statement itself. Baskets can be used as storage units to help declutter your home, bottle and card holders, or bread and fruit displays. Each piece promotes indigenous design, culture; and helps provide protection to the Amazon rain forest.

Ethnic designs of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest cross rivers, waterfalls, distances and challenges to mark their significance in the "Western" market. Before arriving to the biggest city in the Amazon rainforest, the fair traded baskets travel 4000 miles navigating through three rivers and sixteen waterfalls."

Vessels made from recycled cardboard pulp covered with banana plant fiber.

Mara continues:
"In the interior of Minas Gerais (a Brazilian state), banana plant fiber and recycled cardboard pulp have changed the lives of a group of rural workers. The hands that once tilled the soil, crocheted or kneaded dough, now separate and and work the fibers from banana plants. Instead of making bread, they make papier machie. Their decorative pieces are winning the world over.

Sixty artisans now produce 800 pieces a month, on order. The decorative plates have found distributors in other Brazilian cities, Germany, France, Italy, and in our own California Redwood City, USA. They work within a cooperative system and have learned that the banana plant not only gives them fruit, but also sustains their families. They have also seen that their products fulfill both eco and fair trade principles."

Mara also works with individual artists. This one is from her home town of Londrina. The artist recycles used coffee filters as a canvas for her objects:

Many of the fair trade shops one sees around have been selling the same crafts for decades. Although they still play a vital role in the economy of the lives they represent, Bazaar Brazil offers a fresh selection of high quality handicrafts and decorative items. On the first page of their website, there is a link to a wonderful little video interview with Mara that shows the store and other products nicely. Bazaar Brazil does not have a web store, but I'm sure they would welcome your inquiries and if you are in the neighborhood, it's a must visit!

Bazaar Brazil: Bringing Fair Trade from South to North

KUSIKUY Slow Fashion Pulling Ahead

by Tamara Stenn

KUSIKUY is Slow Fashion.

"Slow Fashion exists in a thoughtful, sustainable apparel market."
- Treehugger Blogger

Slow Fashion garments are carefully hand made of locally sourced, natural materials. There is minimum (if any) processing of these materials. Materials are natural, intact, just as nature intended them to be. This leads to garments that are made with premium fibers, ones that are not weakened through chemical processes and ones that will wear well and last longer.

Kusikuy sells yarn and hand-carved buttons on their website.

KUSIKUY's Andean alpaca is the perfect example of a slow fiber. Our free range, indigenous herds produce the finest alpaca in the world. KUSIKUY sweaters last an average of 10 years and can be machine washed hundreds of time. Slow fashion labor practices are fair. Tailors and knitters are careful experts in garment construction and are paid well for their expertise.

Slow Fashion is also sustainable. Being locally sourced and hand made, cuts down on transportation and helps to grow and support communities. KUSIKUY's indigenous knitters are also organic farmers. Today they are more dependent on sweater production now that the tropical glaciers are melting and drying up. These glaciers once provided water for Andean crops. Now the underground, glacial-fed aquifers are gone. Crops can no longer be grown and a life sustaining income is lost. Knitting has helped to replace some of this lost income through knitting work. Buying fibers direct from local herdsman also extends the earnings made by the community.

Kusikuy Knitters in Bolivia

"Slow Fashion also rejects the trend-focused planned obsolescence that has driven the fashion industry for decades," explains Elaine Lipson, writer, artist and sustainable textile expert. Lispon also explains, "Slow Fashion emphasizes lasting design and craftsmanship, so you can buy fewer clothes with a longer life. Design and color palettes are compatible from season to season, so you can build a wardrobe instead of replacing everything in an increasingly rapid and wasteful cycle. Brand loyalty and quality replace quantity." More information (and books) on slow fashion, organics, and fashion can be found at Lipson's website http://lainie.typepad.com/redthread/2008/01/slow-cloth-fash.html

Slow fashion saves you, the consumer, time and money. No longer you have to spend time and gas traveling to stores constantly shopping for clothes. Slow Fashion clothes last longer, look nicer, and in the long run cost less. Plus you now have favorite clothes you look forward to wearing, have a relationship with, and remember. (Note: How many items do we forget are even in our closets because we never wear them? They are too hard to clean, the color is off, we are waiting for the style to come back in fashion, etc.).

Here's an example: Lets say an average factory made wool sweater costs $35 and lasts a season. Then stitches come apart, it pills, stretches, shrinks, and in general is no longer is in style. So another sweater is purchased the following year at the same throw-away price of $35. In six years $210 and countless hours and gas have been spent on buying and replacing "cheap fashion" sweaters. The average KUSIKUY hand knit, luxury quality, alpaca sweater costs $185 and lasts not six but 10 years! So KUSIKUY sweaters are actually much "cheaper" than the un-sustainable throw-away fashions that we may normally buy.

And the savings is not just in your own purse, but in your world too. By buying a KUSIKUY (or any) Slow Fashion garment, you are saving your world from throw away garments entering landfills, the carbon contamination from overseas shipping, and the use of slave-like labor practices often associated with cheap, factory, "throw away fashion" manufacturing.

Slow fashion is mindful, careful, consumerism that fosters positive relationships with the world and its people, of which we all are a part.


Founded in Bolivia in 1997, KUSIKUY was developed by US Peace Corps volunteer, Tamara Stenn. Upon finishing her work with the Peace Corps she returned to the United States to earn a Masters in Intercultural Management from the School for International Training. Inspired by fellow Fair Trade counterparts, KUSIKUY has grown from a small home based business to become an international internet retailer and wholesaler.

In 2004 KUSIKUY became a proud member of the Organic Trade Association and expanded its line of hand made natural clothing to include EKO certified organic pima cotton. Tamara saw a need for more support for the development of organic clothing cooperatives. In 2001, AYLLU, Inc. a 501c3 non profit, was created to help with grass roots development in the Andes and the education of consumers about of benefits of using Fair Trade and organic products. In June 2007 KUSIKUY's headquarters town, Brattleboro, Vermont, became the 2nd Fair Trade Town in the USA. This initiatve was created and backed by KUSIKUY and AYLLU.

KUSIKUY Slow Fashion Pulling Ahead

Politics in the World of Fiber

I have been reading Obama's books, given to me by my Auntie Nyla. I finished "Dreams from My Father" and am about half way through "The Audacity of Hope". I would have voted for him even before reading the books, but now I feel even better about him. Only six months older than me, much of his experience as an organizer in Chicago coincided with the work I was doing at the same time in social service. While he worked in Black neighborhoods, I was mostly on the North side working with Latinos and mixed populations.

I also identify closely with his search for identity, growing up in such a mixed and multicultural environment. I was raised in Brazil (1962-1980), mostly in Maringa, Parana, a pre-planned city that grew out of new immigrants and settlers. My parents were Lutheran missionaries to a German congregation, my best friend was Japanese, another friend down the street was from Lebanon, my brother's best friend was of Italian descent, and many of our friends descended from African slaves mixed with Dutch colonialists, French, and so on. I was always perceived as an American. Then, when returning to the United States and going straight into a white, Lutheran school, St. Olaf College, where almost everyone looked like me, I experienced a terrific culture shock. My natural disposition connected me like a magnet to the other international or foreign students. Over the years, I continued to feel more comfortable with people who had either spent time overseas or who were from other countries. My father told me as a teenager, "You will be able to live anywhere, but will never be at home anywhere." How visionary of him!

Now, living in the South, it is almost like being in another country, or at least it feels more similar to the Brazil I grew up in. Time moves more slowly, values of friendship and family continue to have priority as compared to the constant rush of the city. Thinking about all of this, has brought back images of art, political debate, culture, and dissent that has had an impact on me in the past. I thought I would reflect a bit on this for today's post.

From Wikipedia:

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power"^[1] and refers to the regulation of a political unit, ^[2] and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.^[3]

From Artworld Salon, article on dissent.

So, art relating to politics usually gets our attention when it comes in the form of dissent or protest. Several famous people and political leaders have declared dissent as a core pillar of democracy:

Evelyn Beatrice Hall: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (paraphrasing Voltaire)
George Orwell: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
Harry S Truman: Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
John F. Kennedy: Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive.
Martin Luther King Jr.: Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Mohandas K. Gandhi: Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

Words have always had a powerful effect on my thinking. I remember very few of them, but retain the impact of what I read, if that makes any sense at all. I do remember some t-shirts and posters that were big twenty years ago:

• We are the strangers our mothers warned us against.
• Join the army. Travel to exotic places, meet interesting people and then kill them.
• Nuke the gay whales for Jesus.

Syracuse Cultural Workers is one of the long-time suppliers of posters, t-shirts, buttons, and popular dissent tools for activists in issues concerning social justice. Here are some of their posters:




Che Guevara was one of our heroes when I was growing up in Brazil. Just the image of his face was enough to convey a whole system of thought. Thus, images have even more potential for moving people out of complacency into action.

What I am showing here is pretty tame compared to what is out there. Sometimes, a message can backfire when it is so in-your-face that the viewer becomes turned off and shuts down whatever feeling of empathy might have been had. I think this can happen with images of extreme hunger or war. Humor often works really well for me. Monty Python's "In Search of the Holy Grail" is loaded with wonderful jabs at society. This little piece finds King Arthur in an argument with a peasant. It's even subtitled!



My favorite political satire site, Jib Jab, can be pretty raunchy sometimes, but I think they nail the big issues of the day on the head. Here's one from their site:


It's interesting to look at some of their older ones and realize how quickly much of what is debated in the public arena becomes obsolete so quickly. This is certainly a challenge when an artist decides to address political ideas through his or her work. In examining and recording the decision-making process between those who have power and those who don't, artists interpret history and society from their own unique perspective. Fiber mediums, especially, demand both an enormous time commitment and a viewing platform that are more accessible to other art forms. Historically, the elite have had access to the materials and the time to either execute or commission tapestries, weavings, embroidery, or other fiber work that recorded political events, thus also controlling the message of the piece. This video of the Bayeux Tapestry has been animated and edited to show some action, but look at the size of this thing! 230 feet long! The poor king loses his head in the end...

The Bayeux Tapestry (French: Tapisserie de Bayeux) is a 50 cm by 70 m (20 in by 230 ft) long embroidered cloth which explains the events leading up to the 1066 Norman invasion of England as well as the events of the invasion itself. The Tapestry is annotated in Latin. It is presently exhibited in a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy, France. (Wikipedia)

There is also the ephemeral quality of fiber art. Perhaps there were more reactive pieces that have not survived the passages of time. In more recent history, we have documentation of fiber artists who have told their own stories from their perspective, given coded messages, or profited from political movements. Quilts played an important role during slavery, giving hidden messages to runaways about whether a house was safe on the underground railroad or how to proceed from there.
After the Vietnam War, the Hmong recorded their escape through embroidered Story Cloths. The soldiers, in this case, are good guys, helping them out of harm's way.

Baluchi rug makers began making war rugs to celebrate the defeat of the Russian invasion in the 1970's. These became so popular and collectible, that they now make 9/11 rugs and war rugs with a US theme, some pro, some against, and some just for the sure sale to soldiers and tourists.

Political symbolism comes and goes. The images and text that endure are ones that hit upon universal truths. Obama speaks in his books about the complexity of issues and the difficulty of problem resolution facing our times. His challenge to us all is to build on common ground. It will be interesting to see, if he wins, whether he can take the rhetoric and move it toward workable policies.

Meanwhile, I am especially inspired by artists who address our political problems by offering visions of hope. Hollis Chatelain is one such quilter. I have seen several of her pieces here at the Quilt Museum, and was especially enamored by her huge Tuareg portraits. She uses thread as her color palette, filling up space with machine quilting which can only truly be appreciated when viewing in real life. Many of her quilts are social commentaries, inspiring us towards unity and conservation of resources.

"In February 2002, I dreamed “Hope For our World”. The dream was in purple and Archbishop Tutu was standing in a field. Children from all over the world were approaching him like he was a Pied Piper. The dream seemed to be speaking about World Peace and the Future of our Children. Desmond Tutu represented Hope." Hollis Chatelain

I would love to hear back from the rest of you on what you think the role of art is concerning politics. One article I read about textiles and politics awhile back stated that the general preference is to create "nice" work- flowers, color, pretty scenery, things that don't rock the boat. I like beauty as well as the next person, but I know that when I walk through the Quilt show, the stoppers for me are images that speak about something in a new way. So, is there a place for you in the world of political fiber?

Politics in the World of Fiber