Embroidery as Activist Translation in Latin America

Abstract

Craftivists have long held that embroidery is a language and that it can be used to communicate. Moreover, they have also argued that it is similar to a translation since craft has a unique ability to help transcend linguistic barriers, as it can be a way to transmit messages and emotions around the world when we cannot communicate with words, either due to censorship, a lack of resources or other reasons. In addition, this type of language is said to have specific advantages that make it particularly suitable when it comes to transforming thought and feeling into action and political activism, on account of its materiality and hapticity, which elicits empathy, among other reasons. As conflict and violence are rife in Latin America, this article draws from scholarship in both the needle arts and translation studies, applying their insights to the creative work of Latin American women’s struggles for their reproductive rights and against state violence, by means of embroidery, arguing that this is a form of translation.

Keywords:

• Embroidery
• intersemiotic translation
• craftivism
• Latin America
• needlework
• green tide
• conflict resolution
• gender equity

Notes

1 Wright has also put forward the theory that the embroiderers might have used the proverbs and fabulae depicted on the margins to “smuggle”, as it were, their own commentary on the historical events represented on the main panels of the Bayeaux, which were commissioned, acting as a sort of footnoting where authorship is asserted.

2 This collective was created in the spring of 2012 in Québec to translate, from French into English, the coverage of the student protests against the rise of university fees. They did that because the English-language press was only reporting their acts negatively “while much of the French-language media was supportive of the students’ opposition to an unpopular Liberal government” (Simon 2019, 134). They were inspired by the Arab Spring (“le printemps arabe”) and used the maple (“érable”), a popular Canadian symbol present in the Canadian flag in the form of a leaf, to connect them with the country’s culture.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Armida de la Garza

Armida de la Garza is Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Science at University College Cork, Ireland. [email protected]

Claudia Hernández-Espinosa

Claudia Hernández-Espinosa (corresponding author) is currently a textile process and research student at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork, Ireland. Born and raised in Mexico City, needlework has been a constant passion alongside her early studies (MSc). Recently she completed a Master of Public Health at University College Cork.[email protected]

Rosana Rosar

Rosana Rosar is a Brazilian journalist and independent researcher. She holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Women's Studies from University College Cork, in Ireland, where she is currently enrolled in a Higher Diploma in Advanced Languages (Spanish and Italian) and Global Communication.[email protected]