Virgelina Chará (1953) is an Afro-Colombian human rights activist and artist, Nobel Prize candidate in 2005 and victim of the military displacement and disappearance of a son who, together with the Union of Seamstresses, uses embroidered fabrics for ” coat” buildings such as the Memorial of the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation of Bogotá, 2016, the Casa de la Memoria Museum in the City of Medellín, 2020, and for three days, the Palace of Justice of Bogotá, 2022.
In Mexico the exhibition Weaving with the Thread of Memory, 2009-14 was exhibited, where the art of the survivors of the Colombian armed conflict interacted with groups of weavers from Chiapas, Guerrero and CDMX, creating Quitapesares, blankets and dolls, adaptation of the embroidery as a tool for emotional healing and the perpetuation of historical and personal memory.
Curated by Julia Antivilo, director of the Rosario Castellanos Chair of Art and Gender at UNAM, this modest exhibition included Las Siemprevivas, a collective that contributes to actions and has assisted mothers and relatives of femicide victims in the therapeutic use of embroidery. and/or intervening personal items belonging to Zyanya Figueroa Becerril, Lesvy Berlin Rivera Osorio or Diana Velazquez Florencio.
The “arropamientos” of the buildings commanded by Virgelina Chará recall the environmental interventions of the artist Christo (1935-2020) and Jean Claude (1935-2009). Is contemporary art finite and does its baggage include only processes that non-artists can apply to their own socio-political reality? Do governments only promote museums, memorials and “occupational” activities that create a memory that normalizes state crimes or damages the humanity?; Is therapeutic art both a political distraction and a real method of affective healing and social reconciliation? Does the juridical-judicial sphere end when art therapy begins?
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