Wellington Arpilleras: the threads of memory, a near-by far away, and a contemporary past

Abstract

This text is a political reflection about the creative practice of the Wellington Arpilleras, a collective of Latin American women, living in Aotearoa New Zealand. This inquiry about the Wellington Arpilleras offers a way of “reading” their practice, by bringing forward the ethical and political nature of those group’s interventions that pass-through spaces often reserved to art, academia, and community. To articulate this paper, it is necessary to recall the notion of contemporaneity in Giorgio Agamben. Therefore, Agamben’s questions “‘Of whom and of what are we con-temporaries?’ and, first and foremost, ‘What does it mean to be contemporary?’” are the starting point this inquiry into Wellington Arpilleras practice, with an ethical-political perspective.