After hundreds of hours of cutting and sewing pieces of fabric to create small figurines representing the thousands of people who died and disappeared during the Chilean dictatorship, Montreal artists from Colectiva Crear Poder Popular (Create Popular Power Collective) now want to bring their work to South America.
“For us, it is important to transmit this gift of exile from Chileans who have lived in Canada for 50 years,” explains Carolina Echeverria, co-founder of the collective. “So that the exiles do not die in invisibility, in oblivion,” she specifies.
Thus, the Colectiva Crear Poder Popular, led by five Montrealers of Chilean origin, is seeking to raise $32,000 in order to present the work in universities and museums in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay starting at the end of August.
The canvas ofarpilleraa rough-textured fabric native to Chile, is colossal, measuring five meters wide and two meters high. Placed on a navy blue canvas, each figure represents one of the 3,200 people who have disappeared or died, according to the Chilean government’s National Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, better known as the RETTIG report.
Using this type of fabric was a conscious choice, explains Sarabeth Treviño, a founding member of the project. The embroidery of thearpillera gained popularity thanks to Violeta Parra, an emblematic folk singer of the new Chilean song during the sixties. “It was a weapon of resistance, because women began to depict their feelings, their history, but also to denounce what was happening at that moment in history, such as arrests, disappearances and torture,” explains M.me Trevino.
To never forget
Over a thousand people have joined the Colectiva Crear Poder Popular over the past year to pay tribute to the victims of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial regime (1973-1990). Some have participated in the workshops religiously, others go from time to time. Those who live too far away have sometimes sent their fabric figurines by mail to participate, even remotely, in this collective work.
So far, half of the dead and missing have been represented in the form of figurines. The participants, from a wide variety of cultures, sit on the floor or at a table and start cutting and sewing thearpillera. But before that, “the participant who makes the textile representation of the person also takes the time to read this story out loud,” explains Gisela Frías. She adds that a ritual has been established during the workshops, in which the participants address the dead or missing person by saying: “You will be present now and always.”
His colleague, Mme Echeverria adds that the Colectiva Crear Poder Popular “was able to somehow free the disappeared who were frozen in time for fifty years in a black and white image.”
The other 1,600 figurines will be woven starting in October, when the creative workshops resume. The work should be completed by fall 2025. The five women will present the finished work in three cultural centres in the boroughs of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, LaSalle and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Last winter, thearpillera was notably presented at Montréal en lumière as well as at the Musée POP in Trois-Rivières, as part of the exhibition Changing the world, one work at a time.
Healing through art
The canvas ofarpillera also helps to heal. Denise Andrea Olivares, co-founder of the collective, lost family members during the dictatorship, but she was never able to grieve properly, since she was only a child at the time. “I was very young, so I didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye or pay tribute to them in my own way. By representing them, I was able to do that,” she says.
All five women have been affected by the Chilean dictatorship in one way or another. Some have lost loved ones, others have been forced into exile abroad for fear of reprisals. “When we looked at the list of performances we have made,” explains Mme Treviño, we realized that the closest ones were there [dans l’oeuvre] “.
Give body and soul
The making of thearpillera was entirely made thanks to the participants who gave their time. “Everything we have done in the last year has been without financial help,” explains Carolina Echeverria. “But we have reached a point where the project is so big that we cannot continue without funding.”
The five women launched a GoFundMe campaign two weeks ago to fund the work’s travel to South America and their plane tickets for the end of August.me Echeverria explains that it is very important for them to bring the work to South America in order to also pay tribute to all the people who, for almost half a century, had to go into exile from Chile. “The Chileans were the first Latin Americans to arrive in Canada,” says the co-founder of the collective, “and we want to show what those 50 years of exile were like.”
Apart from Chile, thearpillera will also be sent to Uruguay and Argentina, two countries that received a large number of Chilean exiles during the Pinochet regime. “It was necessary that this healing be shared by all Chileans who are in exile and who will die outside their country of origin,” emphasizes M.me Echeverria, who herself left Chile for fear of persecution. “This legacy can fill the absence that our own departure left. Each of us represents that: the absence and the part of what we could have been.”
In the meantime, the women in the collective are waiting for a response to their grant application from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, which should reach them in the coming days.
To date, the five women have raised only $1,200, far less than what they hope to raise by the end of August. But they remain hopeful. “There was one lady who even offered to sell empanadas to help fund our trip,” says M.me Echeverria.