Lorna Dillon

This book explores Violeta Parra’s visual art, focusing on her embroideries (arpilleras), paintings, papier-mâché collages and sculptures. Parra is one of Chile’s great artists and musicians, yet her visual art is relatively unknown. Her fusion of complex imagery from Chilean folk music and culture with archetypes in Western art results in a hybrid body of work. Parra’s hybridism is the story of this book, in which Dillon explores Parra’s ‘painted songs’, the ekphrastic nature of her creations and the way ideas translate from her music and poetry into her visual art. The book identifies three intellectual currents in Parra’s art: its relationship to motifs from Chilean popular and oral culture; its relationship to the work of other modern artists; and its relationship to the themes of her protest music. It argues that Parra’s commentaries on inequality and injustice have as much resonance today as they did fifty years ago. Dillon also explores the convergence between Parra’s art and the work of other modern twentieth-century artists, considering its links to Surrealism, Pop Art and the Mexican Muralism Movement. Parra exhibited in open-air art fairs, museums and cultural centres as well as in prestigious venues such as Museu de Arte Moderna do Brasil (the Museum of Modern Art in Brazil) and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Museum of Decorative Arts) in Paris. This book reflects on Parra’s socially-engaged work as it was expressed through her exhibitions in these centres as well as in through own cultural centre La carpa de la reina.

The version of that I have uploaded here is the submitted document in Microsoft Word fomat rather than the final published document. This has been done at the request of the University of Texas Press, who ask that final versions are not uploaded. You can access the final version via the journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.
https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2022.4.4.119

This essay explores the emergence of an activist textile art movement in Latin America (referred to using an indigenous term: Abya Yala). The essay explores the transversality of feminist sewing groups, reflecting on the way they generate meaning that transcends the materiality of the original stitched fabric. Often groups start by running workshops, for themselves or for others, then they move to disseminate their artwork, and images of their works of textile art in different ways. In Chile, modern day arpillera makers (arpilleristas) such as the art collective Memorarte take appliqued banners on protest marches and exhibit them in exhibitions. In Mexico sewing groups hold embroidery sessions in public spaces such as plazas but also post art works and connect with other embroiderers transnationally. Likewise in Colombia, there is a thriving quilt art movement. Groups like the Tejedoras de Mampuján create testimonial textiles and there is also a database of testimonial textiles. I argue that these groups create constellations of collaboration. Needlework groups embody a notion of performance on numerous levels as they seek to transmit their concerns on a variety of platforms. The works of textile art generate moves and turns, allowing conceptual ideas to traverse from the private to the public. They are heterogeneous but connect with one another in a way that exemplifies the transversal feminist movement.

The version of that I have uploaded here is the submitted document in Microsoft Word fomat rather than the final published document. This has been done at the request of the University of Texas Press, who ask that final versions are not uploaded to this kind of repository. You can access the final version via the journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.
https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2022.4.4.74

In these Dialogues, Lorna Dillon brings together essays that explore the relationship between fiber art and social justice in Latin America. The authors discuss Chilean arpilleras, needlework projects and the struggle for peace in Colombia, the Mexican Embroidering for Peace Movement, and Margarita Cabrera’s fabric sculptures about the US-Mexico borderlands. The section brings the work of scholars from different regions into dialogue. Beatriz Elena Arias López, Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, and Berena Torres Marín reflect on textile initiatives undertaken by peace signatories of the former guerrilla group FARC. Mathilda Shepard analyzes the work of the Tejedoras de Mampuján, asking what it means to speak of justice, reparations, and reconciliation in the wake of the plantation. Danielle House reflects on Mexican embroidery. She considers violence in Mexico and the way the victims it consumes have been framed as “ungrievable.” Mónica Salazar discusses symbolic resistance in participatory needlework projects about the US-Mexico border. Dillon writes about Chilean arpilleras and Colombian testimonial textiles. She draws parallels among the different artistic practices discussed in the collected essays, tracing the emergence of a supranational artistic movement that generates meaning through a multiplicity of practices. The Dialogues demonstrate the new signifying processes that these needlework groups use, as well as the way they articulate meanings that extend beyond the stitches and semiotics of their clothwork.

In the twentieth century, traditional practices and popular culture in Chile went into decline. The situation was compounded by the fact that in the plastic arts, there was already an established hierarchy in which art based on traditional culture and crafts (artesanía) occupied a subordinate position. The Chilean artist and folklorist Violeta Parra sought to disrupt this paradigm. In this article I explore the way Parra sought to defend popular culture through her visual art by creating paintings that were based on traditional culture but were also extremely modern. There is a paradox inherent in the modernism of Violeta Parra's art and the way it sought to re-position popular culture. On the one hand, Parra's work was indigenous. It counteracted the demise of traditional culture that was brought about by modernism. On the other hand, her work was utterly hybrid. Violeta Parra's art enacted a revival of traditional culture through the fusion of a modern-ist aesthetics with motifs and narratives from Chilean popular culture. To explore the way Parra sought to redefine popular culture, I deconstruct the subjects and visual syntax of the paintings Machitún, Las tres Pascualas, and Casamiento de negros. I look at the resonance of her work, which arises from the popular subjects she presents and the way her work disrupts hierarchies in the field of cultural production.

Dillon, Lorna. "Religion and the Angel's Wake Tradition in Violeta Parra's Art and Lyrics" Taller de Letras (2016).

This article explores Violeta Parra's employment of religious archetypes in her music and visual art. It considers the disparate ways in which Parra employs religious tropes in her arpilleras [embroideries] and paintings. In some cases Parra's employment of religion is satirical and sacreligious, while in other cases her religious representations are serious and profound. In all cases, the same themes are reiterated in Parra's music and in her visual art. Much of the focus in this article is on Parra's representation of the Angel's Wake tradition. By presenting this ritual and other popular practices that are not considered as art, Parra destabilised implicit hegemonies in the field of cultural production. At the heart of her work is a drive to vindicate Chilean traditional art forms, such as popular poetry, which was itself based on a stock of religious narratives. Her use of religious tropes thus offers a pliable view of religion, which places value on folk culture. Although Parra's works can be seen as religious, ultimately the religious narratives are drawn from popular representations and thus it is folk culture that provides Parra with the visual syntax for her art and the themes for some of her song lyrics.

http://letras.uc.cl/tallerdeletras/index.php/n59

This booklet was to accompany our pop-up exhibition of Latin American art at Paula Browne House, Murray Edwards College. The curated festival of Latin American art was run as part of a series of public engagement events we put on to accompany our exhibition What lies Beneath: Women, Politics, Textiles.
The booklet was edited by Laura Moseley.  With interpretation text by Laura Moseley, Koni Borowiak, Francesca Vella Bonnici and Annie Roberts.

I was invited by the Chilean cultural department of culture (the Consejo de la cultura y las artes) and the Fundación Violeta Parra to present my work on Violeta Parra at this prestigious international event celebrating the centenary of Parra's birth. I am grateful to the Consejo de la cultura y las artes and the Fundación Violeta Parra for the invitation and to the British Council in Santiago for arranging my travel. El consejo nacional de la cultura y las artes (CNCA) junto a la Fundación Violeta Parra coordinan la conmemoración de los 100 años del nacimiento de Violeta Parra. Para su celebración, entre las distintas actividades organizadas, se convocó a creadores, artistas, gestores, académicos, instituciones y a la ciudadanía, a generar espacios en los cuales, desde el debate y la reflexion, se analice la contribución de Violeta Parra al conocimiento de las tradiciones chilenas y su rescate como método de investigación y fuente de creación artística. En este contexto y a 50 años de la primera instancia académica que analizó la obra de Violeta Parra, en el año 1968 el Coloquio Internacional Violeta Parra convoca a revistar su legado como cantautora, pintora, bordadora, poeta, recopiladora, curadora de su propia obra e investigadora de la cultura popular.

I wrote about the South American wars of independence and created this bilingual website in my role on the Leverhulme project 'War and Nation: Identity and the Process of State Building in South America (1800-1840)'.


https://research.kent.ac.uk/warandnation/

Following my conference paper at the Coloquio Internacional Violeta Parra on the 30th August 2017 I was interviewed by the journalist Federico Grunewald for the newspaper El Austral de la Araucanía. A small section on my book Violeta Parra: Life and Work is included on page 4 of the supplement Ku, published 24th September 2017. The bit about my book is at the bottom right of the page under the heading Surrealismo y arte pop, which was the title of my conference paper.
http://www.australtemuco.cl/impresa/2017/09/24/full/suplemento-ku/4/a/

I organised this workshop, which was held at the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. It was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Arts Council England (ACE) via the Exchange Project (2017). It brought together academics, artists and museum staff to discuss the value of exhibitions and the role of art in processes of peace building, reflecting on collective memory and providing trauma therapy.