28th April 2020
New Virtual Online Exhibition, Arpillera Dolls Exhibition
Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre are proud to present a beautiful new virtual online exhibition on www.roevalleyarts.com called the Arpillera Doll Exhibition that we invite you to look at. This Arpillera Doll Exhibition curated by Conflict Textiles has emerged from the Online Exhibition Embracing Human Rights: Conflict Textiles’ Journey” and features new dolls created in the last two weeks by makers all over the world including the U.S, Chile, UK and Ireland, Argentina and Colombia. Have a look at the exhibition online at:
https://www.roevalleyarts.com/ex…/arpillera-dolls-exhibition
The exhibition evolved from an open invitation issued from the virtual Kids Activity section on the Roe Valley Arts and Cultural website “Make your own arpillera doll”. To augment the process, we issued the invitation to arpilleristas/makers whose pieces featured in the exhibition, to collectors who lent us pieces, to those who came to the exhibition launch on 7th March and to a wider cohort of people closely connected to Conflict Textiles. Their response to the brief – to create an arpillera doll connected to one of the exhibition pieces – has yielded rich outcomes. Makers from a host of countries – from first time sewers to experienced arpilleristas - using their scraps of fabric, have created dolls of every shape, size and hue, dolls who embody a vast range of actions and emotions and who traverse past, present and future. As the dolls took shape, as their creators gave them colour, action, purpose and voice, they, in turn embodied the messages of their makers and promoted a depth of reflection. Uninvited, the makers have passed on these rich reflections to us, the core of which we present to share with you, the viewer.
Above all, these dolls confront us with the glaring gap between the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the lived experiences of many human beings, over 70 years later. May the spirit of these dolls and their makers prompt and embolden us to confront Human Rights abuses and to embed a culture of Human Rights within our own community and globally.
We hope you enjoy the exhibition and that you share it with friends and family. Please feel free to let us know any thoughts or reflections that you have on the exhibition by email or via our social media channels. A huge thanks to Roberta Bacic and Breege Doherty of Conflict Textiles for their work on curating the exhibition and thanks to all the makers of the beautiful dolls, they will also stand as a reminder of this unprecedented time in our history where we had to stay home.
