Events

ARPILLERAS - Fabric Art of Memory and Protest
An Evening with Roberta Bacic, in conversation with Joseph Eldridge
Abramson Family Founders Room, School for International Service, American University
(Nebraska Ave NW at New Mexico Ave NW, Washington, DC)
March 04, 2012
7 pm - 8:30 pm Space is limited - RSVP recommended

Brave and creative women--whose husbands, brothers, and sons were among the desparecidos (disappeared) of Augusto Pinochet's Chile--turned to the folk art of arpilleras, traditional story cloths, to stitch images of their reality. Roberta Bacic was one of many who helped to smuggle these works out of the country, to raise awareness of Pinochet’s human rights abuses. Now—as a collector, curator, and workshop leader—she travels the world, promoting the power of stitching truth.

No Going Back by Sonia Copeland, Northern Ireland
She has curated exhibits at the Imperial War Museum in London; in Northern Ireland; Germany; Brazil; Chile; and elsewhere. She has led workshops internationally, encouraging others to pick up needle and thread and share the truths of hardship. As a result, her exhibits have expanded from arpilleras from Pinochet's Chile, to expressions of loss and protest and healing from around the world.

The child of Holocaust survivors (one Jewish, one Catholic), she came of age in Chile, and now calls Northern Ireland her home. She is in the United States for a large exhibit she has curated at UMASS-Amherst, and is being hosted in Washington, DC, by Art and Remembrance.

A small number of arpilleras from Chile and elsewhere will be on display at the event. A collection of more than a dozen will be on exhibit in Alexandria, VA during March and early April. Click for exhibit location and information.

Bacic will be joined in this event by American University's University Chaplain, Joe Eldridge, who has spent more than twenty-five years working in the public policy arena as an advocate and analyst on international human rights and humanitarian issues. In 1991 he established the Washington Office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights; during the mid-1980s he worked in Honduras consulting on human rights and development issues; and after a three-year sojourn in Chile in the early 1970s, he co-founded the Washington Office on Latin America and served as its first director. He has an MA in International Relations from American University, a MDiv from Perkins School of Theology at SMU, and a DMin from Wesley Theological Seminary.

The School of International Studies has its own parking garage, located beneath the building. Access to the garage can only be gained by turning right into the entrance off Nebraska Avenue. Click for Directions and Parking Information. Space is limited - RSVP strongly recommended.

Co-Sponsored by Art and Remembrance; Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law, Washington College of Law, American University; and Kay Spiritual Life Center, American University