Weaving memory, embroidering difference: textile artivism and the political agency of people with disabilities

Abstract

This article is situated within the framework of the aesthetics of mourning and memory, exploring how artivist practices, specifically, collective embroidery, can contribute to the symbolic processing of pain, resistance, and justice from the perspective of historically excluded communities. Two complementary lines of inquiry are articulated: on the one hand, the analysis of embroidery as an artivist practice; on the other, its potential as a situated epistemological space. The central issue addressed is the historical exclusion of people with disabilities from official frameworks of memory and knowledge production in Chile, as well as the persistence of ableist logics in the public and cultural spheres. The objective is to understand how textile artivism functions as a critical practice that intertwines creation, memory, and political agency, enabling embodied forms of protest and resistance. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, ethnographic, and collaborative approach, focusing on work carried out with the National Disability Collective and the Bordadoras de Villa Frei, through creative sessions, public interventions, and photo-ethnographic analysis. This methodology emphasizes making as a form of knowing, integrating visual, affective, and narrative techniques. The findings reveal that collective embroidery operates as a form of active and performative mourning, in which textile becomes an affective archive and a visual language of denunciation. These practices make it possible to render visible silenced memories, particularly in contexts marked by repression, structural violence, and the denial of the right to memory. In the discussion, it is argued that collective embroidery is not just art or activism, but it is a situated practice of symbolic reparation and a struggle for epistemic justice that challenges hegemonic narratives from the margins of cultural citizenship.