The Arpilleristas of Northern Ireland: Piecing Together a Troubled Past from the Threads of a Collective Memory?

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9

THE ARPILLERISTAS OF NORTHERN IRELAND: PIECING TOGETHER A TROUBLED PAST FROM THE THREADS OF A COLLECTIVE MEMORY?

CATHRINE WIGNALL (History)

Abstract

How past events are interpreted can become problematic if those events are marked by trauma and loss. Many other factors, such as class, ethno-religious identity and gender, also have a part to play. In a post-conflict society such as Northern Ireland, the process of memorialising the ‘Troubles’ has proved contentious, due in part, to on-going community divisions in the region. Most events concerned with commemorating the conflict often focus on the contributions of men whilst the experiences and roles of women during the ‘Troubles’ are significantly overlooked. However, some Northern Irish women have embraced alternative methods of processing the trauma of the past and one of these methods – quilt-making - bears many similarities to the Chilean textile art of Arpilleras. This article examines the extent to which the use of such a method has enabled women to process their ‘Troubled Past’ in a post-conflict Northern Ireland.

ON 18TH MAY 2015 in Belfast, at a conference entitled ‘Dealing with the Past in Northern

Ireland,’ Irish writer Susan Mckay stated, ‘sometimes in the North of Ireland you see people who seem like ghosts. It is as if they have stayed faithfully in the past waiting for a loved one to return who can never return’ (McKay 2015). The conflict in Northern Ireland known as

‘The Troubles,’ lasted approximately thirty years and, according to Sutton, resulted in the deaths of 3,532 people; of those deaths, 3,210 were men and 322 were women. Although ninety-one percent of deaths were men, Sodaro states that the ‘indirect effects of those deaths’ are more likely ‘visited on women’ (2008, 161). Still, the dominant narrative of male violence in the conflict has often overshadowed the experiences of women. According to

McDowell, the ‘commemorative landscape’ of the Troubles ‘continues to project a hyper- masculine interpretation of the past (and present)’ (2008, 335). Attempting to address this imbalance the Legacy Gender Integration Group recognise that ‘victimhood and survival,’ are ‘personal, complex and gendered,’ therefore, ‘coping strategies’ must be gendered to be

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 effective (2015, 4). Chilean human rights researcher Roberta Bacic identifies the traditional

Chilean textile art of arpilleras (literally ‘burlap’), as a method in which women can use fabric to describe and express their feelings and experience of conflict. Arpilleras are a folk art, embroidered and appliquéd to depict scenes of life in a quilted patchwork and are often created collectively, overwhelmingly by women (Bacic 2009). A survivor of the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet, Bacic moved to Northern Ireland where she believes that arpilleras and textile art can be embraced by women ‘as a therapy to handle their sorrows’ (ibid).1

This article will examine the extent to which traditional textile arts have provided an effective coping strategy from a gendered perspective for women in a post-conflict

Northern Ireland.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) (known as ‘The Belfast Agreement’) considered as marking the end of ‘The Troubles,’ acknowledges the ‘profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering’ and stresses that those killed and injured, and their families, must never be forgotten (1998, 2). However, in the interest of reconciliation, the GFA required a significant compromise from victims and their families who had to tolerate the early release of loyalist and republican prisoners. Although Wittgenstein states that, ‘what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ (1961, 7), Deacon and Calvin argue that ‘people are encouraged to forget’ and ‘remain silent’ after the ‘trauma of war’ to enable a transition to peace (2014, 11). In view of the low participation of women in commemorative practices, it could be argued that women have been disproportionately silent in the post-conflict period.

Bacic contends that when attempting to process memories, especially traumatic memories,

1 Although the quilt makers referenced in this article are not arpilleristas (the content, context and techniques they use are very distinct), arpilleras is a term for a type of patchwork picture that seems to fit the purposes of the following argument. 1

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‘textiles take over where language is not sufficient’ (2014). As traditionally the craft of needlework has largely occupied a feminine position in society it potentially offers a gender appropriate method of expression. Therefore, perhaps textile art presents a valuable medium through which women in Northern Ireland can confront their previous silence.

Textiles are connected to the cultural and socio-economic history of Northern Ireland, due to the influence of the Irish linen industry in the region. According to Nickell, linen production created a regional legacy of stitching and weaving skills and provided women with a ‘natural’ and ‘symbolic’ medium of expression due to the large numbers of women from Catholic and Protestant communities employed in that industry (2015, 243). In addition, textile artist Lycia Trouton comments that linen remains integrated into the

‘livelihood, landscape and quality of life’ in Northern Ireland (2005, 4). Consequentially, this suggests that linen, to an extent, offers a shared past, less contentious than the recent past which potentially could unite women through a collective heritage. Cooke and MacDowell state that the use of fabric to articulate and process trauma is more apparent in societies where textiles possess a ‘deep cultural significance’ (2005, 26). However, in the context of

‘The Troubles,’ Nickell argues that fabric and clothing symbolize a ‘political, cultural and personal identity’ and to that end were representative of division (2015, 236). Aspects of that division have remained in a post-conflict North in the fabric of uniforms, flags, sashes and football shirts which can be used to accentuate a specific, separate identity. Yet, the purpose assigned to fabric and cloth arguably does not alter the material form and central role that fabric plays in our daily lives. People maintain an intimate relationship with textiles, a physical closeness that is different from other material forms. Indeed, the garments we wear, or the sheets we sleep on, retain the traces of our touch, and our scent,

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 even after contact is ended. Dormor observes that this contact transforms cloth into ‘a mapping of human history’ as it contains a ‘blueprint’ of humanity (2013, 93). Therefore, textiles and clothing preserve the agency of memory, which is considerably amplified in situations of grief and loss. To that end, the importance of the linen connection in Northern

Ireland is perhaps equalled by the attachment of memory in thought and material form in a society familiarised with loss.

After seventeen years of the repressive Pinochet dictatorship, Chilean society was also familiarised with loss, as over 3,000 people had been killed or had ‘disappeared’ (Smith et al. 2014). Thus, like women in Northern Ireland, Chilean women had to confront the void left by grief and the painful memory of trauma. Ezell contends that, if painful memories can be ‘decontextualized,’ in turn this ‘externalizes’ memory and enables distress and anguish to be ‘controlled’ (2011, 73). Consequentially, for the women arpilleristas of Chile, the power of their textile art is representative of a ‘collective memory’ as it externalised the personal and located women into the ‘narrative of the country’ (Agosín 2008, 18). Yet, in a Northern

Ireland context, the concept of a collective memory is perhaps contentious when community division is considered. Judith Butler questions whether there is a ‘commonality among women that pre-exists oppression’ or whether women are in fact ‘bonded’ by oppression due to their ‘subordination by masculinist cultures’ (1990, 6). Stapleton and

Wilson argue that, despite different politics and ethno-religious identities, Northern Irish women are ‘accorded a highly conservative role’ and are expected to fulfil the ‘role of wives and mothers’ to ‘further the cause’ of their respective communities (2014, 2073). However, although Northern Irish women may exist within a state of masculine subordination, this arguably does not automatically make them, as women, subordinated. El-Bushra accurately

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 claims that ‘gender is a major axis of power in its own right,’ and a ‘lack of formal power’ does not necessarily ‘deprive’ women of ‘capability or resilience’ (2000, 79). Therefore, it could be argued that women in a post-conflict society share a commonality based on resilience and the capacity to adapt to the everyday difficulties generated by violent conflict regardless of competing ethno-religious identities. Indeed, a United Nations report stated that women are ‘crucial’ in their efforts to ‘preserve social order in the midst of armed conflict’ (1996, 139). Yet, community division to a significant extent has remained a reality in the North. Inevitably, this is problematic when attempting to reach a satisfactory ‘societal consensus’ on the past and has contributed to an ongoing ‘conflict about the conflict’ situation (Bell et al. 2004, 315-16).

The contentious issue of how the past is interpreted, nonetheless, can exert influence on how the present is lived. Agosín stated that the past as represented in arpilleras has an

‘open world of possibilities,’ in contrast to the ‘uncertainty’ of the present surrounded by

‘questions’ (2008, 18). Established in 1991, initially to help individuals who had lost their partners, Wave Trauma Centres provide support for ‘people affected by “The Troubles” across Northern Ireland’ (‘About’ WTC 2003). In 2010, at the Wave Centre in Ballymoney,

County Antrim, a cross-community group formed and created the Quilt of Remembrance to address and process their personal memories of conflict (see Figure 1). The quilt took four years to produce and Wave outreach worker, Velma Irvine reflected that there were ‘many tears’ and ‘much laughter’ along with ‘lots of respectful banter’ that the women shared in the process (WTC 2014, 3). Sandra Riddel embroidered the bottom left patch of the quilt which depicted the funeral of her brother. She described the experience as ‘cathartic’ as it enabled her to work through previously supressed emotion (WTC 2014, 19).

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Figure 1: Quilt of Remembrance, Northern Ireland quilt, 2013, made by WAVE trauma centre participants, photo WAVE Archive © Conflict Textiles https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/search-quilts/fulltextiles/?id=315

There is perhaps, a childlike quality contained in this quilt reminiscent of the naïve art of

Grandma Moses, with its colourful squares peopled by small, precise figures. However, that surface innocence is subverted to convey scenes of violence and distress which is heightened by the tactile nature of the fabric. According to Moya-Raggio, textile art in the arpillera style initiates ‘contact’ and seeks ‘communication’ in its material form (1984, 278).

As a result, viewers are, to an extent, invited to engage with the collective memories of the women through the visual representation of their personal experiences. Indeed, the quilt offers a gendered interpretation of a shared past which expresses the post-conflict present where women become visible through the agency of their work.

Remembrance, Ezell observes, is simultaneously ‘the act’ and ‘the object’ as the memory once processed, can be transformed into a ‘visible’ and ‘knowable’ form, and subsequently,

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 acknowledged and understood (2011, 73). A memorial project developed by ‘Relatives for

Justice,’ a support group that advocates for victims predominately from the republican and nationalist community, is the Remembering Quilt, wherein the ‘act’ and ‘object’ of memory are combined into a visible material form. Inspired by a 1991 exhibition of the AIDS

Memorial Quilt at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the group began to create their own quilts to commemorate loved-ones killed in the conflict (Nickell 2015, 234-51). Each quilt panel consists of forty-nine squares designed and embroidered by bereaved family members, mainly, but not exclusively, women. Squares are often stitched using clothing and fabric which belonged to the deceased and depict aspects of their individual lives and interests

(see Figure 2). As many of the victims died in ‘disputed circumstances’ which allegedly involved State security forces, this quilt is as much an expression of injustice as it is of grief

(Friel 2006). According to Bacic, textile art can be an ‘instrument of empowerment, but also of protest’ in parallel with personal ‘testimony’ and ‘preservation of memory’ (2017). Nickell views the lack of ‘neutrality’ in the Remembering Quilt as problematic as it ‘apportions blame,’ and argues that objections to its inclusion in a 2013 textiles exhibition in Ballymena were indicative of ongoing ‘tensions’ resulting from ‘a conflicted, contested memory’ (2015,

244). However, it could be argued that the function of memory is to recall, recognize and effectively reorder past events, albeit from a perspective informed by social and cultural pre-conditions, all of which are highly gendered.

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Figure 2: Remembering Quilt Panel 8, Northern Ireland quilt, c2002, made by Relatives for Justice participants, photo Colin Peck © Conflict Textiles https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/search-quilts/fulltextiles/?id=190

Therefore, memory, particularly traumatic memory, does not lend itself easily to being neutralized as it is comprised in part from the emotional response to the original event from which it was generated. Furthermore, if a powerful emotion attached to a given event has the capacity to overwhelm, that prospect can appear threatening, and women may opt to remain silent as a method of control. The events that generated this artwork were clearly both difficult and painful to process and the connections to those past events are highly intimate and personal. Yet, for women who choose silence as a coping mechanism, projects like the Remembering Quilt provide an alternative way to articulate their individual response to the conflict.

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How people respond to violent conflict is unique and peculiar to that individual. Whether trauma is internalised or externalised, however, is significantly influenced by gender. A study on conflict-related mental health issues in Northern Ireland conducted in 2011 revealed some differences between women and men. Of the adult population in the North of Ireland, thirty-nine percent had ‘experienced at least one conflict related traumatic event,’ which amounts to 524,000 individuals (Commission 2012, 27). Moreover, trauma that manifested into mental health problems varied according to gender. Statistically, women were predominately affected by mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and depression. In contrast, men were more likely to develop substance and alcohol problems along with impulse-control disorders, defined as intermittent explosive disorder and oppositional-defiant disorder (ibid 52). Therefore, the evidence suggests that women inwardly suppress suffering, whilst men project pain outwards. The preponderance of men to direct anger and frustration outwardly is arguably relevant to the currently high levels of domestic violence in the region. The Women’s Aid Federation who support victims of domestic violence revealed that one in four Northern Irish women have experienced domestic violence in their lives (2018, 6). Noelle Collins, a Women’s Aid Team Leader stated in 2017, ‘If this was an illness we’d have an epidemic,’ and she described the motivation of abusers as one of ‘power and control and having power over another’ (in Williamson 2017).

Consequentially, for some women in destructive relationships it may be problematic to access appropriate activities as their lives could be monitored or restricted by abusive partners. A gender specific project or initiative in a ‘women only’ environment could provide a safe space and perhaps a lifeline for women as opposed to a mixed-gender enterprise which may arouse disapproval and prevent women from attending. To that end, needlework

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 and embroidery as a traditionally female exploit is both gender suitable and would arguably allow women with complex personal lives to participate. This is especially relevant in a post- conflict Northern Ireland as any present life difficulties could significantly impede women’s ability to deal with the past (Beaudry 2006, 4).

According to Rozsika Parker traditionally embroidery ‘was supposed to signify femininity, docility and obedience,’ and that because they were considered to be ‘naturally feminine’, women embroidered (1984, 11). Moreover, as Parker explains, needlework is not passive or docile as it contains an integral ‘active voice’ comprised of ‘our personalities and social lives’

(ibid). That notion of an ‘active’ voice has at times been one of protest or testimony through the domestic ordinariness of sewing. Indeed, Elizabeth Parker, a nineteenth century servant girl intricately stitched in red silk a sampler [c1830] detailing her maltreatment and suicidal intentions. Her hand sewn testament included the detail, ‘for trying to avoid the wicked design of my master I was thrown down the stairs,’ thus she affirmed and recorded her experience in the only voice available to her (2008). Moreover, the Suffragette movement often used embroidery as an ‘act of resistance’ but, also to ‘evoke femininity’ (Goggin 2009,

19, 24). In 1912, suffragette Janie Terreo on hunger strike in Holloway Prison embroidered a handkerchief with delicate flowers and the signatures of nineteen other hunger strikers, she then collectively signed the women off as, ‘Mrs Pankhurst’s Bold Bad Ones’ (Goggin 2009,

17). This form of needlework protest was later employed in 1995, by republican women incarcerated in Maghaberry Prison, Lisburn in Northern Ireland. The women produced a fabric square, hand sewn with the word ‘Saoirse’ [Freedom], along with embroidered demands for women’s rights (Nickell 2015, 243). This square was included in an Irish women’s banner displayed at the United Nations Fourth Conference for Women in Beijing.

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To that end, the ‘active voice’ of embroidery enabled the Maghaberry women to articulate their needs to a wider audience and perhaps alleviated their isolation.

A sense of isolation has remained a reality for many women who lived through ‘The

Troubles’ as they continue to feel ‘trapped in a mourning process’ (Relatives 2015, 4). That isolation is arguably heightened by an ongoing commemorative process dominated by a masculine narrative, one from which women, to an extent, have been excluded. The memorialisation of the conflict, Brown and Grant observe, has been engineered to remember groups who ‘engaged in widespread political mobilisation and violence,’ groups that were predominately male (2016, 150). They stated that, of the 1739 commemorative events that occurred between 2009 and 2014, 59.6% were republican whilst 16.4% were loyalist, the security forces made up 10.6% whereas victims’ groups provided only 5.8%, the remainder were Loyal Orders at 3.0% and local authorities and others at 1.2% and 1.1% respectively (Brown and Grant 2016, 145). This revealed that the militaristic interpretation of the conflict has largely overshadowed and to a degree, overlooked, victim-centred events. According to McDowell, the ‘material culture’ of commemoration is considerably motivated by ‘accusations of blame’ and ‘rival territorial ideologies’ (2008, 338). The issue of blame is highly problematic in a post-conflict North as it fuels division and increases the separation of communities. Smyth contends that the emphasis in Northern Ireland is often less about learning the mistakes of the past and more about teaching ‘enemies a lesson based on past misdemeanours’ (2003, 213). However, the acknowledgment of past violations does not automatically recompense grief and loss; likewise, the truth does not necessarily dissipate anger. Lundy and Robson argue that the ‘rhetoric of forgiveness’ can potentially ‘facilitate perpetrators’ ability to do harm’ as victims feel pressured to make

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 peace when they are unable to do so (2016, 107). Accepting that women generally are the primary caregivers in society any insistence on forgiveness is fraught with difficulty as it effectively invalidates anger in circumstances where anger is perhaps the most natural and understandable response to an unnatural situation. Arguably, an important issue is to find a productive method for women to express their anger, either individually, or collectively.

Even with positives in a collective gendered enterprise however, it may not necessarily provide women with a sense of cultural homogeneity in a divided society.

Stapleton and Wilson claim that the ‘strength of communal identification’ has been a major

‘impediment’ to the collective unity of women in Northern Ireland (2014, 2075). Megan

Johnston, an Irish-American artist who lives in Belfast, argues that, in the North, ‘there are sites where time stands still and places where it is fast-tracked’ (2009, 17). It could be argued that, in a post-conflict society, the past can appear to dominate the present, and to an extent has contributed to a negative influence on any shared future direction. In 2008, a group of unionist, nationalist, loyalist and republican women met at the Quaker Meeting

House in Belfast to create the Shared Visions quilt (see Figure 3). Through needlework the women found common ground and produced a positive textile art which avoided contentious areas related to conflict. One square features two girls Irish dancing beside a unionist Lambeg drum, whilst another square depicts a singular gravestone watched over by two angels with green and orange hearts implying shared grief and loss. Interestingly, one of the squares shows two women examining their breasts either side of the pink ribbon symbol for breast cancer. As cancer affects anyone, irrespective of class, religion or ethnicity, the women clearly found a commonality in women’s health issues around which they could potentially unite. There is arguably a sense of optimism to this artwork and a clear focus on

Diffusion - The UCLan Journal of Undergraduate Research HSS Volume 9 Number 1 (2019) 1.1.9 mutual respect as if perhaps the shared process which created this work could translate into a shared future.

Figure.3: Shared visions, Northern Ireland quilt, 2008, made by Belfast women's groups facilitated by Sonia Copeland, photo Christopher Keenan © Conflict Textiles, http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/conflicttextiles/

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In conclusion, traditional textile art has to a significant extent provided an effective coping strategy for some women in a post-conflict Northern Ireland. This is perhaps due to the support and friendship generated between participating women in their collective artistic endeavour. However, although the creative process is one that is shared, for the women involved this does not necessarily translate into a shared memory of past trauma. Yet, there is a commonality in that past trauma as the overwhelming nature of grief and loss is often an ongoing reality for women regardless of community affiliation. Moreover, the resilience and adaptability of women to preserve a resemblance of normality during ‘The Troubles’ arguably was also a shared experience, lived through as women, and collectively understood, as women. Considering the dominant male narrative in conflict commemoration in the North, this gendered perspective is important, and should be appropriately acknowledged. When that gendered perspective has been expressed through the medium of arpillera-style textile craft it has offered women a uniquely feminine outlet for both a personal and shared response to conflict. Ultimately, this has enabled women in a post-conflict Northern Ireland to piece together a past, albeit a contentious past, from the threads of a collective memory.

Acknowledgements

The author and journal would like to thank Roberta Bacic and Beege Doherty for providing copyright and for reading and commenting on this article.

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Figure 2: Remembering Quilt – Panel 8. 2006. Relatives for Justice, Belfast (size: 2.05m. x 2.05m). www.cain.ulster.ac.uk/quilts/photos/DER08QLT_iri20_1476r.jpeg [Accessed 1 May 2018].

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