1960-1968
Leonor Sobrino carries out several social initiatives with children (Isla Negra Public School) and women (Mother’s Centers).
1969
With the aim of supporting the resident families, Leonor Sobrino begins to develop the first embroideries with the women of Isla Negra, a small town of families of fishermen and farmers. She had the merit of perceiving the strong creative potential existing in the simplicity of their lives and in their naive imagination. Under her mentorship and guidance, these women began embroidering vivid scenes in flour bags using needles and wool of bright color, creating authentic, warm and spontaneous images of their own world.
May 1969
Nemesio Antúnez, then Director of the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) gets to know and appreciate the first embroideries and offers to exhibit them that same year. Pablo Neruda writes the prologue of the catalog.
Oct 1969
The first exhibition of Las Bordadoras de Isla Negra (the Embroiderers of Isla Negra) is inaugurated in the Forestal Hall of the MNBA, with a sample of 38 naive works completely unknown in the local artistic medium. It has great success and outstanding criticism of Antonio Romera.
1970s-80s-90s
For three decades Las Bordadoras de Isla Negra hold various exhibitions in various parts of the world, including the following: The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, 1972), La Galerie du Passeur and L’Espace Cardin (Paris, 1972), The XII Biennial de São Paulo (1973), The Metropolitan Museum of Arts (Miami, 1975), La Fondation de Cachot de Vents (Neuchâtel, 1979), Le Grand Palais (Paris, 1982), The US Department of State (Washington, DC, 1991 ), The Oneiros Atelier (Tokyo, 1993), The Kyoto Sangyo Daigaku (Kyoto, 1994) and The Ayala Museum (Manila, 1996).
1972
The making of a collective embroidery for the inauguration of the UNCTAD-III World Conference in Santiago in 1972.
1981
A non-profit cultural organization, the Isla Negra Foundation, is created in New York to document, conserve and disseminate the creation of the Embroiderers, creating the permanent collection of Embroideries of Isla Negra.
1999
Leonor Sobrino invites all the embroiderers to her home in Isla Negra to celebrate 30 years of joint work. Through a long letter she reads on that occasion, she gives her testimony of this story to the embroiderers, their daughters and granddaughters. The occasion is not a farewell, but announces her retirement from direct work with Las Bordadoras.
2000-2019
The influence of the previous period is projected on the local embroidery tradition that continues in various ways, recently achieving recognition of the appellation of origin.
2016
Under the eaves of the Eladio Sobrino Foundation, created in 2010 to preserve and promote the historical, cultural and environmental heritage of Isla Negra and the strengthening of its local identity, the collection undergoes restoration and enhancement work carried out by a team from the Andrés Bello Central Archive of the University of Chile.
2017
The exhibition Al hilo de Violeta (A wire of Violeta) curated by the artist Nury González, Director of the Museum of American Popular Art (MAPA) of the University of Chile, is inaugurated in the Visual Arts Hall of GAM. In the exhibition the textile work of Violeta Parra is read by women arpilleristas of various civil organizations, including four pieces of work from the collection of Las Bordadoras de Isla Negra.
2019
The exhibition Bordar el Desborde, Las Bordadoras de Isla Negra at the MNBA 1969-2019, 50 years after the first embroidery exhibition in the Forestal Hall of this same Museum. With a delicate curatorship and museography, the montage consists of 24 works from our collection, as well as audiovisual stories from the authors, images from the complete collection, a space to delve into its visual and sound environment, the documentary “Lana Mágica” filmed in 1986 and a tribute to the Collective Embroidery, produced in early 1972 and disappeared in 1973. Due to the success of this exhibition and with the desire to show it in regions, an itinerancy in the South of Chile is immediately organized, including the cities of Valdivia, Puerto Varas, Linares, Talca and Concepción.
During the inauguration ceremony of the Exhibition Bordar el Desborde, its Director was informed of the “reappearance” of the Collective Embroidery, a large work (approx. 8 x 3 meters) produced in 1972 for the UNCTAD III Building and disappeared in 1973 after the military coup.
After 47 years of disappearance, its reappearance is kept quietly hidden for several months, while different cultural institutions try to appropriate the work. During that time of maneuvers, the authors of the work were not informed of its reappearance or consulted about its possible fate. Over time it will be known how it disappeared from its place of origin and how it was hidden for so many years. How, when and why the outrage of cutting it into 4 parts and other illicit actions of the dark time suffered by this work for almost five decades.
2020
In the months of January, February and March, the exhibition Bordar el Desborde is exhibited in the mansion of the Cultural Center El Austral in Valdivia.
Due to the pandemic, the itinerancy is suspended in the other cities of the south, to be continued in the following months.
2021
In October, a book project starts on the Bordadoras de Isla Negra, a testimony to the life and work of this group of artists, with the aim of reinstating their work in the social, cultural and artistic history of the country.
2022
In April the Collective Embroidery, restored, can be seen again by the public at the GAM, Cultural Center an institution that has it on loan.
Three embroideries from the collection are invited to be part of the Exhibition Fuera de norma (Out of standard ) from May through July at the Las Condes Cultural Corporation in Santiago.
Bordar el Desborde resumes its itinerancy and meets again with the public at the Pinacoteca de la Casa del Arte of the University of Concepción, from August 11 through September 11.
Various talks are given by the research team of the BIN Book Project, in times of great activity in Chile on textile art:
- “50 years after the creation of Collective Embroidery“, Luz Marmentini (Wool Festival 2022, September)
- “Authorship and Artistic Creation”, Andrea Durán and Luz Marmentini (National Committee for Textile Conservation, October)
- “The Curatorship Experience”, Alejandra Araya and Andrea Durán (Violeta Parra Museum, December)
At its annual meeting, held in Santiago (October 10), the Board of Directors of the Isla Negra Foundation agrees to support the exhibition agenda of Bordar el Desborde to tour Chile in 2023-2024 and then begin an international tour in 2024-2025. It also undertakes to carry out the Isla Negra Embroiderers House-Museum Project to be carried out between 2024 and 2027.
Leonor Sobrino passed away, a natural death in complete peace, at the age of 110 (October 16). Founder and mentor of this artistic movement, this sensitive and generous woman curated the Permanent Collection of the Isla Negra Foundation, which today shows the world the work of the Isla Negra Embroiderers between 1969 and 1999.
The embroiderers and the community of Isla Negra pay a simple but emotional tribute in the Plaza Eladio Sobrino, where the Camino de Leonor is named after the passage that she traveled every Tuesday for three decades to meet the women of the community (November 19).
2023
The exhibition Bordar el Desborde is showcased at the Museum of Fine Arts of Valparaíso, Baburizza Palace, from March 17 through June 11. Over a period of three months, it received a large number of visitors, reaching a total of 10,691 people. Organized visits are done by students of secondary education and art history from different local universities. The exhibition closes in Valparaíso with a guided tour by the curator and the director of the sample on Sunday June 11.
The exhibition continues in the V Region, in the Casona de Artes y Oficios de Limache of the ProCultura Foundation, being open to the public from Monday through Friday from June 17 through August 19. The opening is carried out with great presence of the community.
From October 21 to November 30, Bordar el Desborde is being exhibited to the Magallanes community at the Austral Room of ZonAustral in the city of Punta Arenas.
2023-2024
Always in Magallanes, the exhibition “Bordar el Desborde” is invited to participate in the Parque del Estrecho de Magallanes, where it is open to the public from December 2023 till May 2024.
“The Collective Embroidery Returns Home and Goes Out into the World” is the title of the exhibition where this great embroidery, made in 1972, returns to its place of origin and visits the Bordadoras de Isla Negra at their home, being exhibited at the Casa Museo Isla Negra of the Neruda Foundation, between December 7, 2023, and January 8, 2024. A tribute is paid to the Authors in a simple and emotional opening ceremony, attended by them, their families, and the community of Isla Negra. During the panel discussion held at the closing of the Exhibition, the embroiderers and the present audience are informed that the next destination of the Collective Embroidery is the Venice Biennale 2024, where it is invited to participate in the main exhibition and will be on display to the public between April 20 and November 24, 2024.