TCexhibitions

‘Circulation Stories: Acts of Mending’, Faial Waste Processing Centre,Faial ( Azores, Portugal),12 -04/30/05-2026

4/27/2026

Silent Stories: Acts of Resilience
Venue: Faial Waste Processing Centre
The Faial Waste Processing Centre has been in operation since 2015. In 2018, its concession was granted to the company Resiaçores, which also manages the Waste Processing Centres on the islands of Corvo, Flores, Pico and Santa Maria.

Org: Government of Azores, Department of Climate Action and RESIAÇORES
Co-production: Bela Dutra (Divisão Gestão Resíduos- Faial) & Guida Mateus (Resiaçores - Faial)
Partners:
Centro Comunitário do Divino Espírito Santo; CATL Golfinho - Terceira
CATL Centro Comunitário Terra Chã -Terceira
Escola Básica e Integrada da Horta Turmas: DOV, Ocupacional B, Ocupacional A, 6ºB, Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Calheta de São Jorge
Escola Foros - Ribeira Grande, São Miguel
EBI Ponta Garça, São Miguel
Casa do povo de Água de Pau, São Miguel
Escola Profissional da Ribeira grande, São Miguel
Norte Crescente, São Miguel
Associação Corvo Vivo; Corvo

Comprometa-se a reduzir os resíduos têxteis
Commit to reducing textile waste

Bela Dutra

Background
Textile Cartographies stakeholders and arts-based practitioners know we will not solve the problems of textile production and consumption, but we firmly believe more cultural and educational tools in formal and non-formal settings must be put in place with communities, schools and universities to raise awareness and change consumption behaviours and enhance resilience. Arts-based methods, such as collective textile making, craftivism and exhibitions are our choice to raise critical questions, invite public commentary, and offer alternative methods to contribute to cultural and critical educational strategies.

Since 2022, the Textile Cartographies Network, has been developing actions and educational projects for peace, environmental awareness and sustainability of the planet, through workshops, exhibitions and academic and community publications in many countries. The groups continue to be interested in exploring textile art and craft as storytelling in order to facilitate means for people to express their concerns visible using alternative ways of communication. Recently, some groups have taken up textiles and digital technologies, as it can potentially reduce the environment and climate pressures from textiles by improving efficiency. However, we are aware digital technologies also risk increasing production and consumption of textiles, for example, through social media or online platforms which have significant environmental impacts.

The groups are strongly committed with digital and non-digital forms of communication to advocate for reducing and recycling materials. Educational actions using arts-based methods have been the main tool for advocacy in this network, through workshops, conferences and exhibitions in strategic community places. The network is more and more interested in exploring how to enhance circularity by extending product lifespans through longer use, increased reuse, repair and more efficient recycling, and reduce the demand for new raw materials. Slow fashion and circular economy are important concepts in the project pedagogies (see TC kit developed in 2022 by researchers from C3 group). In this call, APECV Group invites Textile Cartographies coordinators to send a collection of fabric textile squares 10x10 cm in reply to the urgent need to change human textile consumption habits.

Why the Azores?
The Azores archipelago, as a microcosm of the planet, represents unique social spaces, physical places and cultural contexts to explore arts, craft, design, and to reconsider how we live and why we consume patterns of ‘newness’ in contemporary society. From a lateral geographic position, we enlarge our ‘centric’ vision differently, and with response-ability to decentre western hegemonic practices, specifically relating to textiles. As such we propose the next collective world exhibition of TC in 2026, in the island of Faial.
For this exhibition, we adopt craftivism as our methodological disposition as we take up crafting practices – stitching, needlework, knitting, crocheting and other forms of textile work – as a form of political protest and to advance social causes in relation to ‘glocal’ (global and local) issues and events. Craftivism has roots in feminist environmentalism and feminist new materiality, and encompasses individual and collective art practices that build upon identity, agency, social care and political movements.
In this call, we address two primary themes: climate change and acts of resilience:

Circulation Stories: Acts of Mending
Facing the emergency in adapting to climate change, new models are emerging, for example, circular economies and slow consumption. Implementation of bio-waste selective collection systems is crucial for circular economy, which promotes the closing of the material cycle and guarantees the quality of recyclables. The Azores Strategic Waste Management Plan has been a vital tool for defining structured waste management strategies, and addressing existing gaps and problems. Bela Dutra, our local curator, works for the Department of Waste Management in the Directorate of Environment and Climate Action for the local government. She is an environmental activist and advocates for a radical transformation of consumption habits towards circular economy; slow fashion and craft-making on the Island. She is also involved in raising public awareness of climate crisis in education. After our second exhibition of TC in 2022, Bela Dutra’s invitation to return next year to the Island presents the Textile cartographies participants a new challenge: A non-traditional venue for an art exhibition, and a call to bring our voices to this paradise in the middle of the Atlantic. From there we can may be reverberate our narratives through our squares.

Silent Stories: Acts of Resilience
Textile cartographies resides in the middle of art, education and social justice. In this moment, we attend to acts of resilience. From one side we have the climate emergency in the planet, and this motivation may limit our choice of materials for the upcoming exhibition. We will re-use, re-create, re-imagine longer life for old fibres, and in the process, re-invent art-making with less polluting fibres. From another side, we call out to another emergency: to denounce the gradual increasing of intolerance, lost of democracy, bipolarization and dehumanization of the current genocides and war crimes happening now in Gaza, Sudan, and more places of the world. Against the fear of public discourses, we make art in response, to reclaim space for the unspoken, the indescribable, what is not possible in words, but needs to be expressed visually. These accounts of our time may be present in our textile narratives. Participants can tell their stories in their squares. All the stories will be welcome in the cartography.

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Mapping Stories through Textile cartographies' at School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBC.​

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Mapping Stories through Textile cartographies' at School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBC.