TEXTILE CARTOGRAPHIES:
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The creators of textile maps observe the places, inquire about their history, search for signs, meanings, alternatives. And they represent the stories using fabrics, threads, ropes, wool, etc. with sewing or weaving techniques. To realize climate justice, men and women’s voices must be heard. Textile cartography is a way to tell stories, express ideas; draw attention; talk about eARTh, Maps reinvented with fabrics and threads.
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Project OverviewTextile Cartographies is an activist arts project coordinated by APECV Research Group on Arts, Community and Education (GriArCE) carried out during 2020- 2023 with groups from universities, schools and NGOs in Americas; Africa; Australia and Europe.
The Project aims to study the potential of the textile arts making and the role of arts and crafts in society to open new horizons for micropolitical actions and democratic participation in the general debate about environmental sustainability , The Project methodology is participatory action research though inter dialogue between researchers; artists; art educators and other participants promoting real-world knowledge and experiences into a mutually reinforcing partnership world impact. The collaborative products are small textile narratives, travelling from places to places as gifts to another group and displayed in strategic public spaces to promote wide visibility of people's voices and enable connectivity between people from different areas and living experiences. |
Coordination |
International Coordination:
Research Group of the Association of Teachers of Expression and Visual Communication (APECV) and C3 Group. Partners: Association of Teachers of Expression and Visual Communication (APECV), Portugal; Instituto Piaget de Almada, Portugal, Universidade Senior de Beja, Portugal; C3 group, Spain; Bridge to Nowhere Arts Association Incorporated;University of Gualajara , México ; University of Valencia, Spain; University of Brasilia, Brazil; Escola Agora; University Federal of S. Paulo; Group Bordado como Resistência, Brazil); University of Helwan, Egypt; HEXLappies, South Africa; University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) , Missouri State University in Springfield, MO USA.. USA,; Washington State University, Tri-Cities. Teaching and Learning, College of Education. USA; Namibian Society for Arts Education, Walvis Bay, Namibia. University of Almeria, Spain; University of Jaén, Spain. Participants
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Process |
Process
The project idea was developed during 2020 with invitations to researchers and online meetings to define lines of research and action. It was decided to use participatory action research methods. The implementation of the project started in January 2021 and is coordinated by the international and local coordinators who invite participants to join the project. Following participatory and arts based dimensions, the coordinators and participants explore collaborative process through textile arts as means of communication and activist expression to express ideas and feelings about environmental issues. During the first 2 years of the project, ecofeminist and localization lines of action emerged in all the groups. |
Activities |
During The process is planned locally and through international online meeting with coordinators and participants. Ethical guidelines and Plans for Actions are designed collaboratively.
During 2020-21 the coordinators shared their visions about cartography and examples of activist textile artists . KIT In 2022 the researchers from Santiago de Compostela Maria Jesus Agra and Cristina Trigo selected artists of reference for the project and created a pedagogical kit. Local Actions During 2021- 2023 each of the local coordinators promoted actions groups of people interested in creating a narrative that expresses ideas and opinions about human action on planet Earth in individual textile squares 10x10 cm . GIFTS- Exhibitions During 2022-2023 each Group sent textile works as gifts to other groups for the setting of collective exhibitions, see here the list of international exhibitions. . |
MAPPA, the Latin word for fabric, is a metaphor for this project,
where people from very diverse arts education contexts and with very different forms of understanding of cartographies will creatively engage with other people to promote awareness and produce textile narratives about the way people understand environmental issues. As Steve Willis wrote each person has been impacted differently by the extreme environmental changes resulting in resistance, fear, anger, frustration, depression, anxiety, but also an awakening to family and community, awareness of person and place, celebration of self and others, and much more. Through making arts and crafts we engage in rehabilitative process. Art making in its transformative nature between private and public spheres starts in the lonely and spiritual dimension of the self , to communicate with others . From the silence of reflective making to the sharing dimension of the gift, we use the arts to awake people in collective experiences as we move through space and time. As Steve Willis have stated this is a transformative and evolving process to align the inter/intra reality of the journey to becoming a complete human through artistic practices.
The international dimension of the project enhances the network, It is not a common network created via social media or built upon scholar or academic relationships. In its rhizomatic structure it was built by inviting people who cares about the future and who normally uses arts and crafts to make narratives, it includes diverse groups from very distant places, unified by the desire to join the voices , to make visible their hope in changing values and attitudes towards the environmental crisis. The map of the project is made in serendipity and unpredictability, by walking side by side in a cartography of togetherness open to an infinite numbers of possibilities that a gift can provoke.
Two years of the project, drew a map with 11 groups; 25 coordinators and more than 2000 participants in Australia; Africa; Europe and America. Each group in its own modus operandum valued the collaboration.
In 10x10 cm of fabric, participants told stories about indigenous knowledge; rediscovered their places; the beauty of the landscapes and the living creatures in their regions; opened up the veil of untold stories about their cities; reflected about climate change; about poverty; about food; about peace and conflicts. Stories to make us aware of unbalances and the little time we still have to care about our future in the planet. The ambiguity of the project; the hand made aspect, as Yichien Cooper noticed in the 2022 July Project meeting made it possible for activist educators to use it as a way to accomplish difficult educational agendas dealing with environmental connection and reflect about local taboos
(the) project kind of motivate me ….because it is hidden it is ambiguous, the media the type the tapestry the text style itself it's handmade it's man-made you know, we use our hand to do to do things… ( extract of the transcript of Textile Cartographies Meeting, 29 July 2022)
And this way of making, this humble and solitary act of weaving , embroider or sewing, can be an act of resilience as we can see with the Collective of S. Paulo& Minas, Therefore, as Maria Jesus Agra wrote in her text for the Textile Cartographies Catalogue 2022 , the collaborative dimension of the method is really another important achievement of the poetic proposal of participatory cartographies through contemporary textile art . The act of embroider in group , becomes an emancipatory action, remembering past events, old stories to construct a collective memory which besides its social impact is originated in the private sphere of intimacy. The ritual of collaboration between embroiders which is carried out through group gatherings and the gift for exhibitions in progress is in its ritualistic way a methodology for learning and transforming.
With students in universities and schools; with people making arts for wellbeing in civil society organisations, with art teachers; with friends and relatives the actions of the textile cartography grew up a connection system empowering each one of us, strengthening our hope in humanity.
The following textile Cartography Kit, was developed by researchers Cristina Trigo and Maria Jesus Agra as a resource for the group Actions :
We hope more people will join us to make a global call for Earth, listening to the different voices, especially the women’s voices, silently hidden in the strings of the embroideries, in the quietness of the loom, to express the complex relationships between human beings and the planet they inhabit
The international dimension of the project enhances the network, It is not a common network created via social media or built upon scholar or academic relationships. In its rhizomatic structure it was built by inviting people who cares about the future and who normally uses arts and crafts to make narratives, it includes diverse groups from very distant places, unified by the desire to join the voices , to make visible their hope in changing values and attitudes towards the environmental crisis. The map of the project is made in serendipity and unpredictability, by walking side by side in a cartography of togetherness open to an infinite numbers of possibilities that a gift can provoke.
Two years of the project, drew a map with 11 groups; 25 coordinators and more than 2000 participants in Australia; Africa; Europe and America. Each group in its own modus operandum valued the collaboration.
In 10x10 cm of fabric, participants told stories about indigenous knowledge; rediscovered their places; the beauty of the landscapes and the living creatures in their regions; opened up the veil of untold stories about their cities; reflected about climate change; about poverty; about food; about peace and conflicts. Stories to make us aware of unbalances and the little time we still have to care about our future in the planet. The ambiguity of the project; the hand made aspect, as Yichien Cooper noticed in the 2022 July Project meeting made it possible for activist educators to use it as a way to accomplish difficult educational agendas dealing with environmental connection and reflect about local taboos
(the) project kind of motivate me ….because it is hidden it is ambiguous, the media the type the tapestry the text style itself it's handmade it's man-made you know, we use our hand to do to do things… ( extract of the transcript of Textile Cartographies Meeting, 29 July 2022)
And this way of making, this humble and solitary act of weaving , embroider or sewing, can be an act of resilience as we can see with the Collective of S. Paulo& Minas, Therefore, as Maria Jesus Agra wrote in her text for the Textile Cartographies Catalogue 2022 , the collaborative dimension of the method is really another important achievement of the poetic proposal of participatory cartographies through contemporary textile art . The act of embroider in group , becomes an emancipatory action, remembering past events, old stories to construct a collective memory which besides its social impact is originated in the private sphere of intimacy. The ritual of collaboration between embroiders which is carried out through group gatherings and the gift for exhibitions in progress is in its ritualistic way a methodology for learning and transforming.
With students in universities and schools; with people making arts for wellbeing in civil society organisations, with art teachers; with friends and relatives the actions of the textile cartography grew up a connection system empowering each one of us, strengthening our hope in humanity.
The following textile Cartography Kit, was developed by researchers Cristina Trigo and Maria Jesus Agra as a resource for the group Actions :
We hope more people will join us to make a global call for Earth, listening to the different voices, especially the women’s voices, silently hidden in the strings of the embroideries, in the quietness of the loom, to express the complex relationships between human beings and the planet they inhabit
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