WOMEN AFFECTED BY DAMS: EMBROIDERING OUR RIGHTS

Organização:
Glaucea Helena de Britto and Isabella Rjeille

Autores:
Carolina Caycedo, Glaucea Helena de Britto, Isabella Rjeille, Monise Vieira Busquets, Roberta Bacic

Design:
Luciana Fachini

Capa dura, 17x25cm, 264p, 89 imagens, bilingual (portuguese/english), MASP, 2025

ISBN 978-65-5777-081-8

Arpillera, a figurative textile language that emerged in late 1960s Chile, became an important political and cultural expression of female agency used to denounce human rights violations during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973—1990). In Spanish, “arpillera” means “burlap,” the fiber that is embroidered to tell the stories of its authors’ life, struggle, and resistance. The Chilean arpilleras have inspired many women and social movements internationally, including the National Women’s Collective of the Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens [Movement of People Affected by Dams] (MAB), a Brazilian social movement that emerged in the 1980s to demand a popular energy project and structural social transformations. Using everyday scraps of fabric and clothing, needles, and thread, artists address issues of domestic violence, disconnection between land and community, water and electricity access, the impact of dams and river pollution on fishing and family livelihoods, and other human and environmental rights violations.Embroidering Our Rights features illustrations of 47 works created between 2013 and 2024 by women in workshops organized by MAB across Brazil, each carefully contextualized by a short text.