Together with Alejandra Araya (Historian), Andrea Durán (Visual Artist), Alma Rates (Filmmaker), and since 2016, we've had a series of beautiful meetings with the authors in their homes, where we listened to their stories and shared their experiences. This gave rise to the curatorial essence, based on the poetics of its imaginary and the sensations of living integrated into its surroundings; the beauty and wisdom of nature.
We made a space for the missing collective embroidery, produced in 1972 and a tribute to a creative embroiderer, who recently passed away.
We had access to the core of the work thanks to the collection of more than 40 embroideries belonging to the Isla Negra Foundation, we recorded their stories in videos, we reproduced their landscape and livelihoods in images and sound. Trinidad Moreno and Rodrigo Latrach, from Manual Museografía, made a subtle reading and a poetic design. The textile conservation experts from the Chilean Museum of Precolombian Art, Paloma Casado y Norka Ivanov, collaborated in the tapestries display. With the Sponsorship of the MNBA and the Archivo Central Andrés Bello de la Universidad de Chile and under the umbrella of the Eladio Sobrino Foundation, of Isla Negra, we inaugurated this exhibition on August 29, 2019, with many Bordadoras as special guests and a massive community from Isla Negra present.
Curatorship
The imaginary of Las Bordadoras de Isla Negra (Embroiderers of Isla Negra) and their representation techniques make them key pieces of contemporary popular art and a fundamental link in the creation that unites women of different times in the construction of a space for themselves in the middle of the daily life transforming their domestic territories, their living and their memory into territories of artists, stitch by stitch.
1.-Embroidering imagery
2.-Overflow escape
3.-On the edge of the myth
4.-Overflow: it is said of the rivers when they leave their course
5.-Imagery of the edge and overflow
Alejandra Araya is an Historian and Andrea Durán is a Visual Artist, Director and Deputy Director, respectively, of the Andrés Bello Central Archive of the University of Chile.
Collective Embroidery
Mural two meters high and seven meters wide, conceived by Leonor Sobrino and made by Las Bordadoras of Isla Negra for the inauguration of the UNCTAD III Building in 1972, currently disappeared.
Audiovisuals
It consists of the realization of a series of videos to complement the visit to the exhibition, to meet some of its authors and to experience the world around them.
Ellas is a documentary video of conversations with Purísima Ibarra, Rosa Santander and Narcisa Catalán, all Bordadoras. On the other hand, there is a rather sensory space where people are invited to enter the sounds and images of Isla Negra and their homes. Finally, we are fortunate to have a very rich material in its historical context: images of the TVN report of the inauguration of UNCTAD III, in which Eduardo Martínez Bonati (Plastic Artist and Curator of the sample made for this instance) describes with great detail the collective embroidery.
Also on display is Magic Wool, a documentary by the filmmaker Cecilia Domeyko produced in the late 1980s.
Alma Rates, Filmmaker
Mirko Petrovich, Programmer and Technical Advisor.
Museography
A museum tour in 3 areas (context, work and interior world of embroidery machines) based on our main concepts; the freedom of overflow, the embroidery as a multidimensional object and warmth as a material language. This resulted in the design of a messy and asymmetrical grid, in a variety of furniture and diverse supports that require the visitor to adopt different positions to appreciate the pieces. In the use of wood and light colors that convey warmth and allow the expression of individual pieces and jointly as group, with its infinite richness of images, colors and languages.
After an analysis of embroidery as an object, we wanted to show the act of creation of the women through the assembly of the pieces; it is embroidered on the skirt, it is advanced by rotating it and it is a rough, asymmetrical, highly expressive piece, without necessarily an up and down, where its reverse contains almost as much wealth as its forehead. We design wavy tables that allude to women’s skirts, suspended supports and a circular table that invite visitors to tour the pieces from different perspectives. We feel that with this exhibition a debt of recognition is paid in part to these creators, to their infinite imaginary, an absence is made present and an aesthetic, warm and close experience is given to the universal public.
Trinidad Moreno, Designer
Rodrigo Latrach, Designer
Sponsorship
