Embroidering Absence: War Memories of Salvadoran Civil...

"Embroidering Absence: War Memories of Salvadoran Civil War Refugees"

Presented by Teresa Cruz.

All are welcome to attend.

This talk explores how Salvadoran women, forced into exile during the civil war (1980-1992), harnessed the power of embroidery to confront and heal from absence. Disseminated globally to foster international solidarity, the embroidered pieces encapsulate testimonies of denied massacres, memories of ravaged homes, and ethnographic accounts of exile. Teresa Cruz is a cultural promoter from the Museum of Word and Image in El Salvador (MUPI) and a member of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research team. She embroidered her own story during exile at the age of thirteen, and she will discuss the transformative power of this artistic and political expression. This is a bilingual presentation in Spanish with sequential English translation.

This event is part of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative. It is supported, in part, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, the Salvadoran Canadian Association, and the University of Toronto.