ARPILLERAS OF MIGRATION:  AN A/R/TOGRAPHY ABOUT FEMALE LATIN AMERICAN RESILIENCE  by Mariela Rojas Farias  B.A. (English Language and Literature), Universidad de Chile, 1995 B.A. (Visual Arts), Universidad de Chile, 2000 M.A. (General Literature), Universidad de Chile, 2015  A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Art Education)  THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) JULY 2023 © Mariela Rojas Farias, 2023      ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled:  Arpilleras of migration: An a/r/tography about female Latin-American resilience submitted by Mariela Rojas Farias in partial fulfilment of the requirements for  the degree of Master of Arts in Art Education   Examining Committee:  Rita Irwin, Professor, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, UBC. Supervisor   Peter Gouzouasis, Professor, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, UBC  Supervisory Committee Member  Lorrie Miller, Sessional Lecturer, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, UBC  Supervisory Committee Member         iii Abstract    This thesis is a metaphor for an Arpillera, since it assembles dialogues, poems and photographs collected during encounters between a pair of women who share similar and dissimilar life circumstances. The thesis addresses issues of gender inequality and how the empowering potential of the collaborative and socially engaged textile art of the arpilleras can be a tool to facilitate dialogic praxis within circles of women who have experienced and continue to experience oppressive situations. Through an a/r/tographic approach the thesis analyzes, discusses, and elaborates on elements derived from feminist theorists, critical pedagogy, and art education for social justice primarily. The concept of living inquiry informed by the methodological approach of a/r/tography is relevant and enlightening in the research since it holds the whole theory, collaborative artmaking, and writing–poetic or theoretical–into a unique and personal experience that generates knowledge about feminine migration, single parenthood, and Latin-American ways of being. The results show the transformative power of the arts. In the same way, sisterhood, collaboration, partnership, and reciprocity as key principles of Indigenous Knowledge are present along the whole text.    Arpilleras- dialogue-transformation-socially engaged arts.      iv Lay Summary  This document is the result of my graduate research after 18 months of interviews, artistic work, reflection, analysis, and integration of previous and new readings that were added to this final thesis. The main intention of this research was to make visible the lives of single mothers who come from Latin American communities and decide to migrate to Vancouver, Canada. Through meetings where interviews were conducted, the textile art of the arpilleras accompanied these artmaking encounters. The thesis was completed using art-based practice methods, particularly a/r/tography. Most of the thesis is written from a feminine, friendly point of view that invites the reader to integrate into the various passages of the reading.                          v Preface  This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Mariela Rojas Farias. Ethics approval was required for this research.   BREB Ethics Certificate Number: H21-00258-A002  Project title: Arpilleras of migration: An a/r/tography about female Latin American resilience                 vi   Table of Contents     Abstract………………………………………………………………………. iii Lay Summary…………………………………………………………………. iv Preface………………………………………………………………………... v Table of Contents……………………………………………………………... vi List of Figures………………………………………………………………… vii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………… ix Dedication……………………………………………………………………. xi Prologue……………………………………………………………………… xii Chapter 1: This Arpillera……………………………………………………... 1 Chapter 2: The Base/Canvas…………………………………………………. 12                 Living A/rt/ographically and Writing from the heart ………. 13                 Writing from the heart ………………………………………… 20 Chapter 3: The Thread, the Needle and the Rags……………………………. 28                 Dipti Desai…………………………………………………………. 28                 Suzanne Lacy………………………………………………………. 31                 Rita Segato………………………………………………………… 33 Chapter 4: Our Stories………………………………………………………... 37                 Our First Artmaking Encounter …………………………………… 39                 On Mending…………………………………………....................... 42                Admiration/Sacrifice………………………………………………... 48  vii                   The Arpilleras……………………………………………………... 50                  Migrating …………………………………………………………. 61                  Estrangement ……………………………………………………... 63                  Rooting……………………………………………………………. 68 Chapter 5: The Final Arpilleras………………………………………………. 76                 The Transformative and Empowering Potential of Dialogical Practice in the Artmaking of Arpilleras ……………………………………… 76                 The Socially Engaged Arts and its Contribution to Consciousness-raising………………………………………………………………………….  84 Chapter 6: What is Next? ……………………………………………………. 92                 Suitcases……………………………………………………………. 102 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………. 104 References……………………………………………………………………. 105 Appendix……………………………………………………………………… 114                   viii List of Figures   Figure 1 Me in Pacific Spirit Regional Park ………………………………… 1 Figure 2 The Discarded Rags………………………………………………… 12 Figure 3 Entanglement of Materials in the Textile Artmaking………………. 28 Figure 4 Can a Heart Actually Repair After All This Use, Abuse and Exhaustion……………………………………………………………………. 37 Figure 5 Señora Carmen’s Heart……………………………………………. 40 Figure 6 Señora Carmen Mending Her Heart………………………………… 42 Figure 7 Recycling Fabrics…………………………………………………… 43 Figure 8 Can a Heart Actually Repair After All This Use, Abuse and Exhaustion? (Central Detail) ……… ……………………………………… 44 Figure 9 America 1…………………………….……………………………. 46 Figure 10 Women Abuse is Ancestral………………………………………. 49 Figure 11 Can a Heart Actually Repair After All This Use, Abuse and Exhaustion? (Detail) …………………………………………………………. 50 Figure 12 My Embroidered Bridal Shawl……………………………………. 52 Figure 13 We Always Bloom Together………………………………………. 54 Figure 14 Mother……………………………………………………………... 59 Figure 15 Our Migration……………………………………………………… 61 Figure 16 Finding Ourselves in the City of Vancouver. …………………….. 63 Figure 17 The Exuberant Vegetation of These Lands………………………. 65 Figure 18 Chile Was the Country that Kicked Me Out………………………. 67  ix Figure 19 Raices/ Roots………………………………………………………. 69 Figure 20 La Vida es Hoy/ Life Is Today……………………………………. 74  Figure 21 Preparing the Final Arpillera……………………………………… 76 Figure 22 Women Mending Rags……………………………………………. 79 Figure 23 Finding my Place in Turtle Island (Detail) ………………………... 89 Figure 24 Searching Paths……………………………………………………. 92 Figure 25 Circles…………………………………….………………………. 97 Figure 26 Textures……………………………………………………………. 99 Figure 27 Finding my Place in Turtle Island…………………………………. 104                       x Acknowledgments I acknowledge that all the present thesis has been written, thought, and created in the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples – sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations. I greatly appreciate all the support and guidance from my supervisor, Professor Rita Irwin, whose academic scholarship has opened my eyes and heart to the world of art education; also with her human warmth, and immeasurable commitment, has encouraged me to finish this challenging project. Also, to Professor Peter Gouzouasis, who introduced me to the world of autoethnography in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of the Pandemic, and thanks to him, I discovered the transformative power of words even in the Academy. To Dr. Lorrie Miller, the other member of my committee, who in the middle of our online classes during the pandemic was able to teach all the textile techniques and circles of reflective artistic practice which laid the inspiration for this research.  Especially to Mrs. Maria Vargas, who, without her, this research would not have been possible; since her worldview, warmth, words of support and great affection and willingness to collaborate with me gave me more reasons to continue working. Her life example has dramatically contributed to mine, and, I hope, for other women as well. I would especially like to thank my cousin Cecilia Morasky and her beautiful family, who have been an unceasing source of support during these last few years of hardship to survive in Canada. To Ilichna Morasky who generously edited more than one chapter, to my dear cousins Pablo and Marlene Farias whose constant support and love have made my stay in these faraway lands a little more enjoyable.  To my cousins Heidy and Gregorio who encourage me to continue from the distance. To my dear friends and former colleagues who encourage me to immigrate to this  xi fantastic country and helped me edit the formal aspects of the present document; Barbara Echart, Angela Tironi and Sandra Morales. To my dearest childhood friend Claudia Calatayud; who has been the biggest support during all these years. To my Canadian artist/friend/classmate Rena Del Pieve Gobbi, my chilean artists friends Ivonne Valdes, Carla Ordenes and Rocio Ahumada, your support, words of wisdom and sisterly love have given me the inspiration to understand that change is coming from the feminine side to contribute to the rest of the world. To my Counsellor Claudia Casagrande who helped me navigate through the darkest hours of this process. To my beloved children Simon, Pedro and Helena who have been my great companions, masters and learners in my migratory journey, life, adventures, sorrows, and joys. To my beloved mother, Eugenia Farias, who accompanies me day and night from her meditations and phone calls, without a doubt, she has been a great inspiration throughout my whole life.  July 2023, Vancouver, Canada            xii                 To Raul Rojas Allende, my beloved father, who could not accompany me to these lands.                 xiii Prologue  It is good to remember that the original woman was herself an immigrant. She fell a long way from her home in the Skyworld, leaving behind all who knew her and who held her dear. She could never go back. Since 1492, most here are immigrants as well, perhaps arriving on Ellis Island without even knowing that Turtle Island rested beneath their feet. …She came here with nothing but a handful of seeds and the slimmest of instructions to “use your gifts and dreams for good,” the same instructions we all carry… She shared the gifts she brought from Skyworld as she set herself about the business of flourishing, of making a home. Perhaps the Skywoman story endures because we too are always falling. Our lives, both personal and collective, share her trajectory. Whether we jump or are pushed, or the edge of the known world just crumbles at our feet, we fall, spinning into someplace new and unexpected. Despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us. (Kimmerer, 2013, pp. 8-9)                                                                                                                                                                                       1 Chapter 1: This Arpillera   Figure 1 Me in Pacific Spirit Regional Park  I pick up the image of an arpillera.  Discarded clothes, old used rags and cleaning pads. Paying homage to Indigenous ways of teaching and learning; through story telling. Imagery and the artmaking and with silver, golden, silky threads to embellish. Patchworking, quilting, and mending, repairing narratives. through the use of language, of images and colors. We art-make, art-teach and art-do, and art-be. (February 2022)1    1 Poems I wrote in my journal while I was conducting this research.  2 This thesis is a visual/written narration of some immigrant women who came to Canada searching for a better future.  The research question at the basis of this research is: How do Latin-American migrant women learn to use artmaking as a praxis for social justice/self-awareness?  Statistics mention that the percentage of immigrant women who come to Canada has increased by ten percent since the eighties.2 That means that more and more women make risky decisions to improve their life circumstances for themselves and their children every day.3 However, many problematic factors increase the burden of an already complicated existence of immigrant women. The most prominent factors are linguistic barriers, single parenting, gender, racial and social discrimination.4 Due to these factors, immigrant women are often limited to low-skill activities, such as elderly and childcare, cleaning services or the construction industry. Daily, immigrant women experience grave situations of vulnerability, such as financial instability, and gender inequity, that eventually lead to low self-esteem, poor mental and physical health, to name a few personal challenges. These factors make thriving nearly impossible in society and, at times, make immigrant women doubt whether immigration was the best decision. This research project begins with a collaborative effort among a group of women, with me being one of them. At the beginning we were four women but ended up being just two of us. This is one of the many situations, we as researchers often face when working with people in our investigations.  We gathered weekly for one and a half hours per week, over six weeks, between 2021 and 2022. During this time, we discussed our migrant experiences while we engaged in the artmaking of arpilleras. While making this art, we were in a warm and private space, talking  2 www.150.statcan.gc.ca 3 https://www.unfpa.org/news/five-reasons-migration-feminist-issue 4 https://www.unfpa.org/news/five-reasons-migration-feminist-issue   3 about a series of events and thoughts around our migrant experiences as Latin American single mothers.  The name arpillera comes from the Spanish name given to the burlap fabric used in sacks, usually for the stock flour, potatoes, or other food essentials. These were the base (the canvas) where images were depicted by embroidering or, as it eventually evolved, by adding rags of recycled pieces of old or unused clothes, to paint or create different elements that shape and model a scene. Generally, these arpilleras would have city life scenes, countryside landscapes, or even more abstract representations. They are part of the folk-art tradition in Chile. This tradition of arpilleras comes hand in hand with one of the greatest Chilean visual artists, composers, singers, and researchers, Violeta Parra (Dillon, 2017, 2020). Other authors (Bryan-Wilson, 2021) have mentioned that these would be found in other regions of South America like in Colombia or Peru. During the sad events of the Dictatorship, which lasted for seventeen years (1972-1989), the arpilleras were used for different reasons than they were originally intended. Many people were abducted during these dark years of my country due to their political affiliations and beliefs. Mostly, they were activists, dreamers, university students, factory workers, even high school students. The wives, mothers, and sisters of these disappeared people began to meet at the entrances of hospitals and police stations in the capital city, finding no answers to their concerns about the location of their loved ones. Moreover, it was there that the Vicariate of Solidarity from the Catholic Church promoted the creation of workshops to teach these women this artform (Adams, 2013; Bryan-Wilson, 2021). These women soon created the arpilleras that carried important embroidered messages to the world about the atrocities of the violation of human rights happening at that moment hidden by the military, and invisible to the rest of the world. (Bryan-Wilson, 2021) People who visited  4 our country from Europe and North America, who supported the cause, began buying these arpilleras at a low cost. These artistic artifacts would travel abroad, telling the truth, denouncing torture and crimes perpetrated by the political power at that time. This kind of art turned into a textile newspaper for the people abroad since the military narrative would taint any truth in our country. In this way, these women generated some financial sustenance to feed their families. They would also use this money to buy more thread and material to create these meaningful artistic manifestations, knowing their men were unable to work (Adams, 2013; Bryan-Wilson, 2021). Through the years, different groups of women started working together, informed by this textile protest art. Many other disastrous events such as femicides, child abuse, environmental depletion and more, persisted across time. In the sixties, feminist struggles led by women who continued this feminine, silent, and maternal gesture of sewing, mending, upcycling, and repurposing, were telling the world the unheard truth of their collective fights (Emery, 2019; Lacy, 2010). More recently, since the social uprising in my country in October of 2019, collective groups have gathered and manufactured even more textile protest art, where women, again, deployed their collective work in the streets.  As it is shown in the appendix of this document an abundant list of these groups for the reader to check even more examples of protest textile art (Santos Ocasio, 2020; Mora Grisales, 2020). I chose to work with Latin American single mothers and migrants because these descriptors also describe my own identity. My idea of collaboration, reciprocity, and solidarity comes mainly from my Latin American background. In my memories of Latin America (Cusicanqui, 2017), women usually share the realm of womanhood where ancestral knowledge is transmitted, where news were told, and where there was this incommodity when men would  5 appear, as Rita Segato (2016) has mentioned in some of her conferences.5 As such, they are natural, voluntary, and often created as a show of affection, or sisterhood. All this in an attempt to mitigate the heavy load of being a single mother and an immigrant to a country whose culture and language differ significantly from one’s own. In the words of Suzanne Lacy (2010): "Social engagement in the arts is rooted in the exploration of art connected with everyday life" (p. 288), and our practice was based on those same principles. The idea originated from an experience I had during the COVID19 pandemic lockdown in 2020. I found myself without a job to financially support myself and my three children, while studying for a graduate degree. So, although all my work experience had been in the academic field, I decided to work wherever I could find a position. Fortunately, I found a cleaning company run by a young woman from South America. She gave me the opportunity, and here is where everything began: my adventure in this new world of single mothers from Latin America who meet in houses/offices through cleaning jobs. While my research did not formally began then, the text, the textiles, the stories, and the history each woman carried with her, soon inspired the research. Most of these are our negative memories, spanning our places of birth to the many different cultural manifestations surrounding our origins: the memories were different and similar at the same time; the same as our everyday Spanish language. It was in the middle of one of the cleaning jobs that an epiphanic moment occurred. In the spur of the situation, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning, rubbing, sweeping, every single corner of floors, walls, windows, counters, furniture, carpets, of different houses, offices, apartments,  5 CIICH UNAM (2018, November 27) Examinando el mandato de masculinidad y sus consecuencias [Video]YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffHKKeLD_yk&t=979s    6 stores, studios, basements, main rooms, and more. We were using cloths, rags, and all our bodies, minds, and souls in the task. This experience turned out to be exhausting moments, or hours, and even whole days. It was then, that I realized that the dirty rags (due to the frantic use) became a metaphor for my life. After some conversations with my workmates, I noticed it was a metaphor for theirs as well. This opportunity opened my eyes and permitted me to see life in a different tone. Our intersectionality was revealed to us since we were a group of women, single mothers, Latin-Americans cleaning houses and offices in Vancouver, Canada during the Pandemic.  This research includes stories told during these encounters. In this a/r/tographic effort I depict my own words in a dialogical effort in the company of the participant. My own experience will be alongside the stories of the other participant while we share personal reflections, and interpretations in this investigative query throughout our artmaking. The objective of this research is to pursue social justice and self-awareness through dialogical praxis (Freire, 2000) together with empowering women in their vital life decisions. The study also hopes to raise awareness while engaging the public in the world of Latin-American single mother immigrants. In many ways, the research presents an example of socially engaged pedagogy; “Organizing networks of solidarity to imagine and create alternative ways of being, a task that is inherently pedagogical –involving learning to work across social differences and to engage contradictory ideas, beliefs, and values that rub against each other" (Desai, 2020, pp. 17-18). Like any socially engaged art project (Lacy, 2010), it belongs to many people, not only the makers/ doers but to the ones who feel called, evoked, and provoked. Everything that the participant and I have made with these arpilleras has been discussed, and after intense conversations we have drawn conclusions on what will be the best way to finish them, if there  7 was to be end. As Lacy (2010) mentions about the way participants decide the authorship of SEA (socially engaged art) work: “They can gain agreement from their constituents and enlist them as coauthors in acts of self-representation” (p. 293). That is to say, it is not my work, but a work made by both of us, and the ones who will continue. In Chapter 2, I discuss A/r/tography, paying special attention to the concept of living inquiry. “A/r/tography as living inquiry necessarily opens the way to describing and interpreting the complexity of experience among researchers, artists, educators, as well as the lives of the individuals within the communities they interact with. As a result, it also opens the topics, contexts, and conditions of inquiry.” (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. xxv)   Living inquiry fills the pages of this thesis and it accounts for the whole process that comes to life in the form of text and artifacts, that is, the arpilleras. This process attends to personal experiences of the participants and of their families as well. It is sensible because intimate passages are exhibited to the reader. The intention is to make visible the invisible through this complementary artmaking process. The artmaking process is supplemented with library-based research where a community of scholars also contribute through citational practices in the final work.  This view of facing research has been tremendously beneficial for my academic path, especially, because I deal with people, students, teachers, and artists. From my perspective, I have difficulty understanding an investigation that deals with human beings without me (as a researcher) being the observer, without being affected by what I observe.   8 A/r/tography is the methodology where my three different identities as artist, teacher, and researcher merge, fight, play and find an escape. “Those who live in the borderlands are re-thinking, re-living, and re-making the terms of their identities as they confront difference and similarity in apparently contradictory worlds” (Irwin, 2004, p. 29). Here, the methodology opens positively and unimaginably; there is potential and possibility. This hybrid work investigates the visual, the poetic, the narrative, the ethnographic, and autoethnographic inquiries, while employing visual and textual metaphors to accompany our dance of women sorting out everyday life difficulties as we meet, talk, and remember. All this is part of the artmaking event. "A/r/tographers are living their practices, representing their understandings, and questioning their positions as they integrate knowing, doing and making through aesthetic experiences that convey meaning rather than facts" (Irwin, 2018, p. 147), also, in Gouzouasis (2006). In Chapter 2, I also introduce different perspectives on how this thesis is written. This hybrid thesis can be classified among many genres, the same as my hybrid origin of the Latin American race. We have pursued different writing styles, or this other6  way of writing and doing research, even in academia, which sometimes can seem unsettling for the most conservative North American minds. Therefore, while paying respect to the different origins, especially to autoethnography in some of its different approaches, as well as to the Etnografias from the Global South (Jaramillo Marin & Vera Lugo, 2013), I go along with different authors that support my way of writing here. The autoethnographic text is a form of personal history, what Gregory Ulmer (1989) calls the “mystory.” The mystory is anchored in epiphanies, major and  6 Here I refer to the notion of the colonized or inferior being, or way of being that is different to the norm (Spivak, 1985).    9 minor turning point moments that have left their marks on the person. The mystory is a performance narrative that critiques those social structures that have shaped and marked the person. (Denzin, 2018, p. 21)  After presenting the methodological approaches to the research, in Chapter 3, I will introduce the work of scholars in the fields of arts, education, and anthropology. Their work helped me produce this thread of thought that reverberates and breathes throughout the text. I am particularly drawn to activist artist Suzanne Lacy, a feminist North American artist who has been very active since the sixties. Throughout her career, she has drawn attention to femicides and domestic violence, raising awareness to those atrocities with the public. Her socially engaged way of making art is about showing what is often hidden to the public’s eye through artistic media. After presenting the methodological approach of a/r/tography, I will continue introducing Dipti Desai, whose work intersects critical pedagogy, social justice, and the visual arts (https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/dipti-desai). Her scholarly work has illuminated and given essential insight into how artists face contemporary problems such as gender inequality, underpaid work, to name a few. I am also drawn to the work of Paulo Freire, whose work has a vast trajectory in the field of the critical pedagogy and has impacted different fields of knowledge. I paid special attention to the raising of consciousness through culture circles. The Culture Circles Freire proposed are considered dynamic spaces of learning and knowledge exchange that value the group experience and promote its participation in the construction of collective, contextualised knowledge that is committed to the transformation of reality. Organised in the form of circles, the individuals meet in an educational process that is aimed at investigating themes of  10 interest to the group. The key elements guiding this process are dialogue and problematization when the students are invited to confront the situations experienced in their daily life with a view to further critical feedback. (Monteiro, 2015, p. 168)  I also used ideas extracted from readings and conferences from Latin American, social anthropologist, Rita Segato. According to her, men have been instituted in a position of privilege causing unjust situations, and therefore, tremendous damage to women in Latin American society. Segato (2018) also mentions that the European conquest contributed to the present-day role of women, as opposed to our Indigenous past, where women had a more protagonist role. She gave me some hints to understand more clearly nowadays oppressive situations that disfavor women. After a brief literature review that begins Chapter 4, I depict my encounters with the only participant since, as mentioned above, the two others had to leave the project. Unfortunately, given the heavy workload of these women, they did not feel able to commit more time to our encounters, though some of our few conversations with one of them appear here. In this section of the thesis, I utilize autoethnographic writing, poetic inquiry, creative non-fiction, etnografia afectiva7 to share revelations for the reader and myself. Here, I encourage the reader to feel part of our conversations, knitted with scholarly contributions that support many ideas, aspects, and events drawn from the encounters.  In Chapter 5, I discuss two important topics that resonated throughout the process of the arpilleras artmaking. One is a dialogical practice, as a fundamental drive to foster self-awareness,  7 Affective Ethnography  11 and the other is the socially engaged arts and its contributions to collaborative artmaking projects. Both concepts act as powerful metaphors, as if they are the warp that holds a whole tapestry of images, meaningful conversations, and social problematics that affect women in a neoliberal system. Of course, more concepts could be drawn out of this whole research, but these two are more prominent for the pedagogical purpose I decided to show to the community of scholars. Chapter 6 is a final epilogue where I provide aftermath thoughts and possible approximations that this study could reach. Finally, I offered some last verses that embellish a new arpillera and the continued presence of this liminal space that I sometimes fight to settle and tame.   12 Chapter 2: The Base/Canvas8   Figure 2 The Discarded Rag  There is a thread in this discovery.  It is never straight, always curly, and swirly,  as the world of nature,  as our lives, as the waves,  the leaves, feathers, and dry soil.  The wind stretches on the surface of the sand.  at the beach,  dancing of the leaves,  the flight of birds,  the invisible waves of the sound of our voice. (January 2022)     8 I call the base of the arpillera a Canvas because in the same way you have a canvas in order to paint, you have a clean fabric to paint with threads and floss.  13  Living A/rt/ographically and Writing from the heart I come from the field of art, education, linguistics, and literature. I understand the nature of knowledge as not static but dialogical (Freire, 2000; Cusicanqui, 2017), constructed daily by engaging in conversations with students, colleagues, professors, family, and friends. With my artwork and with the environment, as well. These different encounters nurture this knowledge. It is organic. Therefore, it breathes, grows, and extends. A/r/tography encompasses all the different languages of the artistic realm.  A/r/tographers may use text, image, sound, and movement to convey their art forms. Individuals appreciate their contiguous identities as artists, teachers, and researchers (Irwin, 2004, 2009; Springgay, 2005, 2008). Therefore, it is research done by artists who are also educators and researchers who pursue continuous inquiry in order to enlarge their perspectives on pedagogical knowledge and artistic practice as they consider how new knowledge impacts themselves and others. It resonates with my worldview, i.e., understanding the world as neither segmented nor fragmented but interconnected. That is to say, a/r/tography sees the world in an uncolonized way; by this, I refer to the fact that embraces interdisciplinarity, there is an anarchic dis/order here, where no role (teacher, artist, researcher) is more important than the other. The three different perspectives bring to life significant contributions to artmaking, reflecting, researching, and teaching experience. A/r/tography is respectful of reality, observing, interpreting, and reflecting in a non-segmented way. As nature, as reality is.  Here, I see the difference with other methodologies, which attracts me the most.  Another aspect of a/r/tography that seems relevant to explain here is the postmodernist view about the nature of knowledge production, the rhizomatic nature (Irwin et al., 2006), of entries and exits, taking and throwing, retaking the thread, and knitting. “A/r/t/ography  14 transforms the traditional relationship between theory and practice by recognizing the movement found within a rhizome” (Irwin, 2006, p. 199). This giant knitting of knowledge, of different colours and textures, represents an organic way of being in the world. That observation is crucial, as it is respectful and depicts what occurs when we face ourselves with a learning-teaching moment. In the same way, I discovered new textures, tonalities, and motifs throughout this investigative journey. This search and quest of dialogues, interviews, and conversations, mingling and sharing, lives, childhood images, parents, ancestors, lands, food, music, clothes, stitches, shapes, verses, dreams, wishes, and desires.  In this event where knowledge is generated through artistic practice and living inquiry, a/r/tography reminds us of the organic concept informed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987): the Rhizome. The tubercule/root grows underground, searching for nutrients. It makes itself some space in the underground darkness, where it is nurtured by food, water, and light. It finds many different routes/roots. "Different texts, images, and languages merge, pull apart, and merge again and again" (Irwin, 2004, p. 32). Creating different paths and roads, building a net, an entanglement or disentanglement. It moves, departs, leaves, and traces a path while making its way. According to Springgay (2008), "Rhizome operates by variation, perverse mutation, and flows of intensities that penetrate meaning" (p. 158).  Here, each idea comes from another; they trace the many different thoughts and ideas that belong to others, which have been presented or exposed to the scholarly realm. These ideas insert in the weft of words, letters, and threads braided and rendered in different shapes, forms and tonalities in the text crowded with citations, and references, paying homage to the work of others. In the words of Irwin and Springgay (2008), “Critical exchange that is reflective, responsive and relational, which is continuously in a state of reconstruction and becoming something else altogether” (p. xx). That is to say, there is  15 no end here, as in the spiral of the Indigenous time, nor the linear of the Western present (Marker, 2011). As the Latin American Indigenous scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (2017) mentions;   There is no post or pre in this vision of history that is not linear or teleological but rather moves in cycles and spirals and sets out on a course without neglecting to return to the same point. The Indigenous world does not conceive of history as linear; the past-future is contained in the present. The regression or progression, the repetition or overcoming of the past is at play in each conjuncture and is dependent more on our acts than on our words. (p.96) In early versions of a/r/tographic scholarship, (Sinner et al., 2006,) six different renderings were often used to highlight how concepts could act as methods that unfold in organic and rhizomatic ways:  The methodological concepts of contiguity, living inquiry, openings metaphor/metonymy, reverberations and excess which are enacted and presented/performed when a relational aesthetic inquiry condition is envisioned as embodied understandings and exchanges between art and text, and between and among the broadly conceived identities of artis/researcher/teacher. (p. 1224)   For the concept of contiguity, the stitch joins art and the written word, captivating and producing an inseparable unit as it happens in the following pages you are about to read soon. For the metaphor and metonymy, senses provide us with tools to make meaning throughout the inquiry process, the whole and the parts committed at different degrees; in the case of this  16 research, the arpillera turns into the transformative artifact of our lives/discarded, exhausted rags. In the case of openings, they provide us with opportunities to find new meanings and readings of different texts (visual, auditory, written, or more), which the images, stitches, shapes, and colours we utilized in this artmaking comprehend. The reverberations speak about the image of a sound that expands its aura beyond the present space or moment; reminiscences, memories, and lost feelings, and this belongs to the audience as well as to the artist. Excess reminds me of the literary technique, Stream of Consciousness9. Here, something similar occurs where, through images and text, the a/r/tographer lets their imagination flow, from their knowledge, and new aspects of our lives emerge since we let out flux of ideas and images run smoothly and freely, allowing knowledge to sprout out of this artmaking dialogue. All in all, the words of Springgay et al. (2005), “six renderings of a/r/tography as an approach to research that is attentive to the sensual, tactile, and unsaid aspects of artist/researcher/teachers’ lives” (p. 899), inform us about the ways research has been done and what has happened in this process.  In the case of this “arts-based research as enacted living inquiry, which we call a/r/tography” (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 899), I primarily utilize the concept of living inquiry since I believe that the work/life divide is unacceptable. In my artistic quest, all my work has been tied to my living experiences. I have learnt through the passage of years that all our life experiences transform us into the people we are at present, i.e., I hardly speak or make art from a place I do not feel, breathe, or think as mine. I have a solid commitment to my work, job, and life experience. It is what turns us into the people we are. In other words, all my experience has moulded me into the artist, teacher, researcher and, most importantly, the human being I am  9   stream of consciousness, narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts. https://www.britannica.com/art/stream-of-consciousness  17 today. The words of Carl Leggo support my own thinking, “we tell stories of our lives, and we reveal ourselves in intimate ways, and we grow more confident in our conviction about the power of words for writing our lived stories, and transforming our living stories, and creating possibilities for more life-enhancing stories” (Springgay, 2008, pp. 3-4).  To explore deeper, see Gouzoassis (2011). Also, since there is always something else, endless figures, images, texts, sounds, and movement that unfold in new meanings and images (Springgay et al., 2005). The text transpires my way of being in the world. This is a different way of seeing the graphic and artistic nature of a/r/tography. It reveals the artist or human being behind the research. As an art-based methodology, it differentiates from another. As Springgay et al (2005) mention; a/r/tography reaches different corners that academic research does not reach; We need to write personally because we live personally, and our personal living is always braided with our other ways of living—professional, academic, administrative, artistic, social, and political. Therefore, in the creative practice of a/r/tography which acknowledges and researches the rhizomatic connections and interstitial spaces and contiguous relationships that shape and compose our ongoing living inquiry. (p. 5)  Therefore, this different form of doing and writing academic research describes our human experience.  In the same way, Springgay et al., (2005) mention that there is a displacement produced in study from product-driven to the active participation of doing and meaning-making. Therefore it is “ a rupture that opens up new ways of conceiving of research as enactive space of living inquiry” (p. 899).    18 A/r/tography guides us to unprecedented, uncertain, stable/unstable results, as life does. It was here that a/r/tography was attractive to me, for the benefit of this research, because there will be some entry points and many exits, many stages that would lead us to the unknown or yet to know realms of knowledge. As we do not know the result of this exploration, there is trusting uncertainty" (Irwin, 2003, p. 64). It leads us to unidentified results/paths or new encounters, beginnings, and becomings (Gouzouasis, 2013). As it occurs in any research, results can lead us to unknown places, which is why this methodology respects time, and life experience. Always considering the social, living nature of the participants, elements and events that take part in the research of this nature. According to LeBlanc et al. (2015):  A/r/tography is a practice of living enquiry that combines life-writing with life-creating. It promotes artistic enquiry as an aesthetic awareness, one that is open to wonder while trusting uncertainty. Through attention to memory, identity, autobiography, reflection, meditation, storytelling and cultural production, artist/researchers/teachers/learners expose their living practices in both evocative and provocative ways. (p. 335)  A/r/tography, as a non-quantitative methodology, does not provide measured results but exposes aesthetic experiences, through the use of the different languages the arts provide us with, we navigate in a realm of images (poetry, sounds, movements, speech, visual, sensorial), that transport us to known and unknown spaces, times, dimensions. As Yanko (2021) expresses,  When we engage in art, the emergent aesthetic experience is dynamic rather than static. It involves making delicate discriminations and discerning subtle relationships, identifying  19 symbol systems and characters within these systems and what these characters denote and exemplify, and interpreting works and recognizing the world in terms of works and works in terms of the world. (p.237) The aesthetic experience rendered in the arpilleras created during this study evokes and provokes different perspectives in our stories of migration and single parenthood. They depict the whole migration experience across time and space. Important passages in my life have been exposed and scrutinized together with the other participant’s experiences. These passages are present in the autoethnographic writing, in how I have decided to express them, and in the poetry, as you see from time to time. It is also present in the photographed arpilleras that you see also in the present document, as well as in the incomplete arpilleras we are continuing to make.  All these elements are here. This whole thesis has turned into an immersive journey of appreciation, observation, and reflection since I have been reading and rereading my stories while also reading from a context that is often social and domestic. In some of her publications, Irwin (2003, 2004, 2006) mentions that a/r/tography leads us to unknown results, pointing out how we are led to many possibilities in the creation of knowledge. Moreover, as others read a/r/tographic texts, others may realize they have experiences that resonate with what is described. As a result, others may embrace their a/r/tographic research. The new understandings may seem endless; that is to say, the results or the conclusions of this research open ever more opportunities to explore the world of migration, single parenthood, feminists’ fights, Latin American world through various processes involving images, sounds, movements, and/or words. The warp holds the tapestry, the textile, the text.   20 This same warp sustains these many texts.  that go searching way in and out.  Appearing and vibrating in the rhythms of  words, phrases and ideas. (March 2022) Writing from the heart Writing has been part of my world since an early age when I had no one to tell or show my appreciation, concerns and observations of the world and things around me. It was in fallow, for ages, until I freed myself from school and decided to write my hidden wor(l)d. Therefore, writing poetically and mostly autoethnographically, without being aware of that term, was something I would have done since my twenties.  It is something similar to what bell hooks (2003) expresses about writing "I rely on the sharing of personal narratives to remind folks that we are all struggling to raise our consciousness and figure out the best action to take" (p. 107), I need to mention her words because it crosses all and even more my own research about the feminine, the marginalised communities, the need to stamp your footprint in the world, and say your words. On the other hand, Carl Leggo (2019) wrote, "we narrate ourselves, and we are narrated by our lived experiences. Therefore, we are both the subjects and the predicates of the discursive functions that compose our subjectivity which is always plural, multiple, tangled, mysterious, malleable, and unpredictable" (p. 4). He surprises us with this beautiful poetic prose. The words of Ellis (2004) also express a deep connection with my own view of this other form of writing in the Academia: “I write because I want to find something out. 'I write to learn something I did not know before writing it" and “Writing is a method of knowing" (p. 115). Knowing myself through  21 the stories of these women turns out to be an essential aspect of this research. That is to say, in this a/r/tography where I write about our stories, something expressed by all these different authors occurs. Even though we cannot classify them as similar, they have all been part of my personal, introspective academic journey to develop this research. As I mentioned above, there are different academic and non-academic, literary, and artistic ways of writing in this thesis, i.e., I make use of the creative potential and flexibility that the department (EDCP) the place where I am doing this research at UBC, offers me. Therefore, I can mention that I use different writing tools such as autoethnography, poetic inquiry, performative writing, personal narrative, creative non-fiction and maybe more yet. Through this query of personal narrative, I try to make sense of all the learning and depict experiences personal and collective where I analyse culture, identity through my lived experiences. A/r/tography encompasses, allows, and invites all these different ways of writing. Beginning with Chapter 3, I try to convey meaning in this inquiry to better understand myself in relation to others and the world around me (Gouzouasis, 2008). The way I write enables me to find my place and position in the world navigating through the social, political, educational, and economic categorizations that the social sciences use to classify, and therefore, study individuals. I write these stories because, through storying my interaction with the women that I am working with, I understand similar and different stories that place us in similar life circumstances within a broader context of cultures the same as Gouzouasis & Ryu (2015) mention. In the same way, I may discover how social, political, and material events have similar impacts and results in our dis/similar lives. According to Leggo (2019), writing academically or in an imperialist style (Kincheloe, 2016), needs to be seen from another perspective, it needs:   22 A return to 'personal' or 'non-academic writing' as a way to reclaim a form of expression that really matter–writing that reaches beyond the walls of our conferences, that eschews jargon to make a bigger tent, that dismantles the sense that the writer is the master of her past or of all that she surveys. (p. 72)    Ellis (2004) also has her say in this matter: "Sometimes I think academia would be a more inviting and productive space if we were comfortable feeling more and openly expressing something other than boredom or criticism" (p. 115). Consequently, writing, following a structured pattern, from my artistic viewpoint, leaves behind creativity, your own voice, and your own essence. 10According to Reed-Danahay (2014), the three aspects of critical theory embedded in autoethnography are “to understand the lived experiences of real people in context, to examine social conditions and uncover oppressive power arrangements, and to fuse theory and action to challenge processes of domination” (p. 20). That is to say, we start by observing ourselves and begin writing these observations, sometimes engaged in dialogues with participants who would consent to contribute to our study.  From there, we obtain conclusions, we state our positionality/ intersectionality11 of who we are in our different roles, different from the professional, from our making in the world,  10  As an apologetic act, this paragraph sets in the middle of this chapter to support my predicament of why I needed to write in no other way. 11   Intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender that often manifest as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage (Claxton, 2021, p.72.). Positionality is the notion that personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands the world. In this context, gender, race, class, and other aspects of identities are indicators of social and spatial positions and are not fixed, given qualities. Positions act on the knowledge a person has about things, both material and abstract. Consequently, knowledge is the product of a specific position that reflects particular places and spaces. (https://www.arteachingcollective.com/positionality.html)     23 which sometimes is the same. As women, we assume, aspire and dream, create in so many other roles in the world, not only in society but in the vast network of relations with which we are entangled.  Autoethnography is the study of culture through the self (Ellis, 2004). From there, we come to understand our position and culture. Using this approach to analysis, I learn about myself through writing (Leggo, 2019; Gouzouasis &Ryu 2015; Bochner & Ellis, 2002) as well as through the process of talking with the women, while we were engaged in artmaking. In the rhythm of the words, in the images we embroider, in the actual fabric/rag, or on the keyboard of my laptop, we unravel our past, we analyze what happened, we turn to other memories, and we understand from another place, more calmly, more objectively, since there is a certain understanding of what has happened to us and to the others. Here, we learn to cope with our own personal issues. To do this kind of writing, one has to have something that is not teachable…"soul"… opening up deeply personal space in your life from which to create understanding. …In this space, we learn to see and feel the world is a complicated manner and then reflexively turn that lens on ourselves. (Ellis, 2004, p. 12)  The fact of coping with our personal issues makes this research approach primarily human. It deals with human conflicts, events, problems, traumas, everyday situations, and more. The researcher is the object, the protagonist, and the observer simultaneously. On the other hand, autoethnography provides an account of one’s experience for others to learn from. It is pure generosity, bravery, and empathy. The words of Carolyn Ellis (2004) resonate with mine here: "I want my research to provide an understanding of what happened to  24 me and help others, who face similar circumstances, cope" (p. 135). The powerful stories told during these encounters confirm Leggo's (2008) words when he refers to the storytelling of our lives: “we reveal ourselves in intimate ways, and we grow more confident in our conviction about the power of words for writing our lived stories, and transforming our living stories, and creating possibilities for more life-enhancing stories” (p. 4). When we realize the time that has passed and the person we have become, we see a change, a transformation in ourselves. As Le Blanc (2010) states about difficult life experiences, “They encourage dialogue and explore the possibilities of new figured worlds, allowing us to transform our adversity” (p. 367). Remembering the past stories that have brought me to this present moment, I see things in perspective, detaching emotions that caused sour moments. Still, as enriching experiences that turned me into the person that I have become today, with the courage that brought me to these foreign lands as an immigrant.  Depicting images of ordinary people in their daily routine lives, which focus on the analysis and intention the researcher wants to show. There is an educational purpose behind the different layers or texts that the reading states. It is helpful in multiple possibilities from the position of the writer/actor/reader and the reader/observer. Finding out through word, re-reading, remembering. In Spanish the word remember is recordar, it comes from the Latin word recordari.12 You live the experience with your heart again, and you have turned into someone else since time has passed. You have experienced a change and have turned you into a transformed person. As we are constantly becoming into something new because we are alive. There are always new readings, new insights, new beginnings, and new epiphanies. Organic beings whose bodies are not the only ones that grow or evolve but the whole being does– 12 Which means to bring back to the heart (https://www.wordsense.eu/recordari/).   25 feelings, emotions, and ways of thinking. Contexts change, and people with whom we relate to also change. (Gouzouasis et al. 2013) We learn from lived experiences. New experiences that have occurred since a specific situation is described in an autoethnographic narrated experience, means that we are no longer the same as we once were. Our cities, our jobs, contexts, the family's economy, the natural catastrophes, the external forces that shape our lives take new paths, and this net of interconnections grow and model a totally or partially new object of study.  As the research progressed, I observed different stages of approximation towards the inner lives of each person. They were developed in tension, and I, as an observer/participant, could understand that this could successfully be done throughout an environment of respect and a teaching-learning experience. This work is intense, meaningful, emotional, and deeply impactful because it shows us how complex, robust, and fragile the human experience is. Besides, it shows us how vulnerable, breakable, and fixable human existence can be. It also shows us how different cultures, contexts, geographies, ages, genders, nationalities, and languages share the universality of the telling of an experience that could transform the writer and the reader. Adams, and Bochner (2011) conceptualize autoethnography as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience” (p. 273).  Self-reflection and reflexivity13 are two different concepts that emerge out of this way of writing, which is, as mentioned above, what I observed in the conversations with others. The process is informative and is undertaken using the literary tools we have at hand. Our writing turns into a powerful tool because we tell the world about our lives, experiences, and reflections  13  Through the process of writing, sharing, and discussing, the reflection becomes reflexive as it engages the writer and reader into deeper thought and understanding. See Gouzouasis (in press, 2023a).   26 that we obtain from these conversations by using engaging stories. It is done to raise awareness, promote social justice, and create a more just, equitable world for marginalized communities. On the one hand, it promotes different ways of seeing alterity through the eyes of the Spanish speaking, immigrant, single mothers. It is a depiction of our own ways of being in this new context, Canada. On the other hand, this way of writing fosters understanding among the many different cultures that coexist in this beautiful Indigenous land, colonized only two hundred years ago, in the same way my own motherland was colonized five hundred years ago. Every artist, researcher, teacher is constantly working in the field and realm of the possibilities. They are constantly challenging the many external modelling forces and situations of our everyday lives. There is always another motivation that will lead us to move further on and to create a new beginning. Intertwined motives, considerations and experiences lead us to unknown places. As a must, there needs to be an act of passionate commitment to make our art. As Ellis (2004) poses, “Inquiry without being in tune with oneself in relation to the world we live in is meaningless. Autoethnographers seek essences and meanings rather than portraying and representing precise facts” (p. 115); Also, (Gouzouasis & Ryu, 2015). As with the many transformations that life has, I will recount in this tapestry of migration; stories, images, and verses throughout this a/r/tographic research. Thus, it is with nature, with humans, with all beings. Thus, is with people researching, reflecting.  about their teaching-learning practices. Thus, it is when we see that there is a need to do so,  to replicate, to make it public.  To increase the collective knowledge of this big tapestry. we all contribute and collaborate. The metonymy and metaphor  27 The rendering The texture The collective The empathetic The sisterhood I found. Writing the storytelling.                    28 Chapter 3: The Thread, the Needle and the Rags.     Figure 3 Entanglement of Materials in the Textile Artmaking  There are many voices that engage in dialogue in this document. Some of them appear more than once, and others seem to be guiding my whole journey. These are the ones that are mentioned below, since from them I base my thinking thread. Dipiti Desai Socially engaged arts is art for society, that is, artmaking in collaboration. Through its praxis, artists make visible the problematics that affect marginalized communities, even the lives of their participants. Understanding that "Art can't change the world on its own, but art can contribute to changing the world" (Desai, 2020, p. 39). It presents what is hidden or not evident for society through creative and artistic ways." As a form of radical imagination, art can allow us to develop a new shared understanding about the world that, in concert with political, social, and cultural institutions, can move the barometer of social change toward equity and justice" (p. 21).  29 It is a collective, non-hierarchical and has the community in mind. It promotes social justice, equity and solidarity. Dipti Desai, within her scholarship and academic work, talks about the socially engaged arts and how they can help change views about different kinds of groups. Throughout her academic, scholarly, and pedagogical practice at New York University, she has involved the community through her students' projects in the courses she dictates. Her words about the necessary change that needs to be done, mixed with the pedagogical target that she sees in her work are: In order for art to work toward creating social change, a culture shift needs to be sparked that moves people to embody and internalize the new ideas, values, beliefs, and patterns of behaviour. This culture shift requires organizing networks of solidarity to imagine and create alternative ways of being, an inherently pedagogical task–involving learning to work across social differences and to engage contradictory ideas, beliefs, and values that rub against each other. (Desai, pp. 16-17)  These networks need to be created by and for people who can let themselves think critically and have some space to discuss the conditions of their existence. This is why I decided to produce a work that involved people who shared similar experiences to myself, Latin-American single mothers. We are a group with shared experiences. A collective process involves a shift from personally defined topics and a self-centred drive often found with traditional studio artists. Socially engaged arts is a collective process whereby artists think collectively, working with others to arrive at what will be rendered. Desai  30 (2020) mentions: "Artistic organizing is grounded in collective artmaking, which is a process of learning to work across differences to be effective in shifting the balance of power in society" (p. 19). Collective ways of being, probably, is coming from our ancestors; at least in my Latin-American experience, it is something I can observe and criticize. The artmaking process of the apilleras would not have any chief commander but different pairs of hands, minds and hearts working at their speed, choice, and conversational mode. The presence of different voices that converge and diverge makes this collaborative work even more interesting, as in the words of Desai (2020): As a constitutive activity in political activism and social movements, collectivity is a form of cultural production that is not about individual self-expression, or even political expression, but rather, it is about democratizing social change that requires building networks of solidarity that makes invisible histories visible. (p. 19)  Specifically, in the arpilleras textile arts, many movements around the globe hold the struggle flags that paint the streets with colourful pieces, once discarded rags and now beautifully chosen embroidery threads. In the Appendix of the present thesis there is an extensive list of some of the many textile movements, exceptionally specialized to work in the arpilleras, to fight for humanitarian causes. These are the Instagram accounts of more than a hundred groups I could find thanks to the Instagram [@mil_agujas_por_la_dignidad], a research project of another Chilean artist-researcher pursuing graduate studies in Spain, and who is mapping all the textile  31 movements, especially embroidery ones. There, I could see groups devoted to collective fights, which further inspired the development of the present research.14 The place where I dwell at this moment makes me think in the collective. The whole process of immigrating, the social uprising in the southern continent especially in my country Chile, and now with the pandemic, has made me think collectively, no longer individually. There are mixed messages out there saying that we are a group, that we need to care for each other, that we need to sort out things for the best.  Everybody has something to say; that is the beginning; observing and listening to other voices. Here is where my research starts, when I, as an academic, saw myself needing to clean houses and find voices in the work these women perform in society to survive. To make visible what is invisible to the world. Tracing, the same as in the thread, the stories that led us to our present circumstances. These stories have a lot to tell the world, and the audience has a lot to learn from them. And here we have this small sample in the works of single mothers who immigrate to Canada to pursue a better life for us and, therefore, our children. An image of a tree with roots and branches so deep in the earth and so high in the sky that entangle with other branches and other roots. They go underground, travel carrying information, news, messages, and experiences; they create a network covering all the world. That is what I see in immigration, and that is the image I depict in my contribution to this tapestry. Suzanne Lacy Also, in the United States, I found more echoes in the art and political activism present with the work of Suzanne Lacy whose work socially and politically contributes to improving other people's conditions, by raising awareness, and making visible the invisible. Even though  14 See Appendix    32 her work does not always fit into the category of a Socially Engaged Art, since the authorship has always been hers and not of the collective. I mostly appreciate her words as a feminist, and socially engaged artist who is concerned about women who suffer from oppressive situations or violent acts perpetrated against us. In the introduction of the book Leaving Art (2010), Lacy mentions the specific conditions on women's lives and, mapping communities of women regarding their roles and experiences. This is where I stand, that is, my identity, position, and experiences, because one of the women who participated in the research is me. In Lacy’s autobiography, where she details her legacy and statement of interest, she walks through the history of socially engaged art in North America and Europe, and mentions, how art was deeply involved in her life. She also reminds us about the politicized period of the ‘70s "when notions of equity were mixed with questions on difference, art took on a decidedly political cast. Marxist, feminist, lesbian and gay, Chicano, African American, Native American, and Asian American artists began working within their own communities" (2010, p. 288). This provided me with even more ideas and supported how I thought a work of art could be developed. The art itself is the process, the personal, the collective, the encounters, and the result, which is alive and in a constant state of Becoming. Maybe because I live in a multicultural society, where issues about class, gender, race, and ethnicity have been present since the beginning of this state nation. She also theorizes about the process in a socially engaged art project, where she mentions that it can: Provide them with a useful vehicle for exploring the daily life of ordinary people. Process privileges time and relationships, giving activist artists a way to shape the non-traditional aspects of what they do. Art media in these works seldom exist in  33 and of themselves, but are called into service to reveal the relational, social, or political process under consideration. (Lacy, 2010, p. 292)   The art media used to give life to this project is the textile art of the arpilleras, with all its different variants and all its territorial differences and names. On the other hand, she mentions that the focus is on the process, on the organic, but not on the static work to be exhibited. The many relations, ideas, stories, images, memories, events, and resources emerge out of a collective and socially engaged kind of work. Engaged artists bear witness so others can share their perception or experience of suffering. Their artwork is often constructed with great care for the emotional and educational passages of the audience, motivating them to ‘wake up’ to the issues. Lacy's words are accurate about what occurs within a community, the spectator, and the audience. The dialogue, the eye-opening situations that are rendered in front of their eyes. "What concerned me most here was that the artwork becomes a platform to highlight a concern, gather resources, and stimulate community discourse" (Lacy, 2010, p. 295). Since the need to represent and convey the story of a diverse group through my voice seems to be an opportunity to open the debate about migration experiences, opportunities, and social inequality in the Latin American diaspora in Canada, specifically in Metro Vancouver, and what is more, the single mother's experience. Rita Segato In the book La Guerra Contra Las Mujeres (2016), the Argentinean feminist anthropologist Rita Segato, which contains her last twenty years of study work and analysis about feminism in Latin America; she mentions that the conquest and colonization subverted the  34 hierarchical pattern in the Americas by the modern European man. Women were relegated to the domestic and private spheres; that would explain how women's fragility came to be. As opposed to this mythical period in which bonds of solidarity, alliance and cooperation were characteristic of communal life. Men took the world of politics and the public, relegating women to the domestic realm. This text gave light to many ideas that were part of my imagination, and I found the solid basis of the investigations held from years by her.  According to Segato (2016), the otherness was constructed in the following way: the Indian is/was the other of white, and women are the other of man; therefore, the man was universal15 (p.93), she clearly states our place as subalterns, as the second-class citizens, as the aliens. The word feminine makes more sense in the development of the present research because, at least in the lands where we, the participants of this research, come from, the definition and origin of the role of the woman are more inclined to our ways of being. One of the participants said it was in our blood for knitting and sewing these nets of solidarity, always thinking about the others who could benefit from a work like this. This sense of inclusion and understanding of collaboration, emphasizes reciprocating with one another. In one of Segato's lectures (CIICH UNAM, 2018), she states that in the Americas, reciprocity and cooperation among women were key concepts managed by the community. For her, these are the most important and relevant elements that can help reconstruct an apocalyptic world in this stage of advanced ferocious capitalism. So maybe one of the consequences of this research can be a small contribution to understanding the different ways of being that coexist in this multicultural society of Canada.  15  Translation from Spanish done by me for the purpose of this research.  35 The social uprising in my fatherland (Taub, 2019), gave me more reasons to continue thinking about alterity. The pandemic made me realize my situation as a single immigrant mother with no citizenship. I found reasons and strength in the people I met in this company, working next to each other, facing difficulties, and risking our lives out of the virus to survive. With creative force, imagination, collective, reciprocal, respectful, and common origin; the Latino community. Here, Segato's words make sense when she says not to look at the European and controlled civilizations, but in our first communities in their roles as preservers of the lands and harmonious inhabitants and protectors of nature. She calls women; subjects of rootedness, guardians of the environment who practice a politics of another kind16 (2016). We, Latin-American participants of this collaborative textile have decided to root ourselves in foreign lands, even though our instinctive nature called us to behave differently. It was not an easy decision to take, but a difficult one. Segato (2016) states that gender violence related to power is the three patriarchal abominations leading to these “crimes, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny” (p. 166). For Segato (2018), "different forms of supremacy such as racial, economic, political, social, colonial are copies of patriarchal ways of being. Segato (2016) also mentions a mythical past, present in diverse cultures around the world where women were the rulers and eventually, they were colonized and subjugated by men, therefore, disciplined them. This is essential information hidden in the subtext of the narratives knitted in most of our dialogue. Segato (2018) uses the following words to describe the past of our societies: “Domination, colonization, appropriation, abuse, extraction and possession being the masterpieces of a predatory consumeristic culture” (p. 198). Through the stories narrated, the topic of violence is present in the description of sad  16 Translation from Spanish done by me for the purpose of this research.  36 events about how we came to be single mothers and, after many years, ended up here, immigrating to this territory.  In the scholarship of Segato it is almost impossible not to acknowledge that Latin American people are colonized. History shows there was colonization. Even though we can look white or European, Indigenous blood runs through our veins. From this perspective is where I reconstruct and inform my work. I utilize the language of the South, the language of the colonized people of the Americas, in the voice of two women who came North to another newly occupied land. For my work, I embrace the Indigenous epistemologies of collaboration, solidarity, cooperation, bonding, and working for a collective good. These women said they would make an effort to help me get my degree, and in such a way, I would be able to get my Permanent Residency. I also think about teaching them this artmaking, arpilleras that come from my country. We would mend our histories and stories of scarcity and fight with this work. We will reconfigure our present and draw our future. Segato has made a bright assessment of the situation of the conditions that many women live these days in Latin America.           37 Chapter 4: Our Stories   Figure 4 Can a Heart Actually Repair After All This Use, Abuse, Exhaustion?   “Are you Mrs. Rojas?” asked the RCMP officer while he opened the door of the police car in Denny's parking lot, a diner in North Vancouver on a Summer night in 2020.  It was around 10 PM with some light still in the sky. This was my first summer living in Canada, a totally new experience.  “This is my ID. It is my UBC card. Unfortunately, I am not carrying my passport with me,” I answered with a mixture of puzzlement and exhaustion. After all, it had been one of the longest days of my life.  “Your children are concerned,” said the policeman with a lovely gesture. “They say you left home at 7 am and have not heard back from you since 2 pm.”  38 I had left home early that morning to start a new job as a driver and cleaner for a company run by a young woman from Venezuela. I never thought I would have to clean offices for 6 hours nonstop, a nightmare of carpets, mops, machines, dust, water, and sweat. It was an old four-storey building whose offices where mostly used by Middle Eastern Immigrant lawyers. It was the first day that I decided to work doing whatever I could to survive during the Pandemic. I needed to pay university tuition fees, pay rent, buy food for my family. So, I had no choice. It was unexpected since my children, and I never imagined that coming to pursue graduate studies in the first world would mean doing this kind of work. They had been used to seeing me working as a university teacher or as a studio artist since they were babies. I wasn't sure whether to get angry or cry. I Imagined how desperate they might have been when I was not home earlier. Being 10,500 kilometres from their fathers and with no person to contact in case the worst happened must have been hard to bear.  Exhaustion made me pause and sit in the car I was hired to drive. Señora17 Carmen and I had been cleaning inside this building for hours. It was a labyrinth of offices – small worlds where every person would have their own compartmentalized lives. I grabbed my phone, which I had accidentally left in my backpack, and found a lot of phone calls from my eldest son and a dozen messages from my middle son asking me where I was. I had lost track of time in my frantic new cleaning job. Quite different from when I used to get lost making my sculptures in the ceramics studio or even painting my watercolours in any place at home. It was another kind of experience. It was tiredness and desperation to finish these endless rows of offices.  17 Mrs. in Spanish.  39 On the way home, I explained to Señora Carmen why I needed to work, and my children were so scared. That we were living as a single-parent family on campus at the UBC residencies. She smiled at me reassuringly. “Don't worry, mamita.” 18 “You will be okay.”  “In this country, you will have the possibility to thrive.” After a brief pause, she continued.  “My son came here more than 30 years ago.”  “When he was only fifteen.”  “He was running away from the Civil War in our country, El Salvador.”19 This would be the beginning of our journey as confidantes, artmakers, collaborators, and sisters in gratitude and pain. Señora Carmen is one of the kindest and strongest women I have ever met. She is a woman whose transparent eyes make you trust her immediately. She has given me her time, patience, creativity, memories, and reflections on how life has been for her as a surviving Latin-American single mother and her adventures as an immigrant in this country. According to Lacy (2010) "the practice of art is taking a stand against helplessness" (p. 298). I became engaged in this research project as a result of my experiences after I arrived in these distant lands. Here, "the engaged artist must remain optimistically creative while struggling with seemingly hopeless situations" (p. 298), and it was certainly something that resonates deeply with the genesis of my research.  Our First Artmaking Encounter  18 The kindest Spanish word (little mother) we use to refer to someone we love, generally our daughters. 19 The Civil War in El Salvador caused the death of more than seventy-five thousand people.   40 Señora Carmen begins our first artmaking encounter by closing her eyes, joining her palms next to her heart, praying and saying.  “We have gathered here to share wonderful stories that in certain moments were extremely difficult, as hard as an unstoppable storm.”  She stops for a moment, and then continues. “Where the thunderstorm does not stop and spreads everywhere.”   Figure 5 Señora Carmen’s Heart  For me, this was a moment of silence, respect, and introspection. I can tell that this artmaking is relevant and sublime for her. In other words, it is a "reflection of the longing to connect and heal through artmaking” (Lacy, 2010, p. 298). Also, it is sharing our lives and reconstructing our stories through the arpilleras artmaking. Considering that this work is not only for us, but also for the many other women who live similar events in their daily routines, who  41 believe they are the only ones experiencing situations with no escape. Since our domestic routines disconnect us from other women, making us isolated, thinking we are the only ones who live in desperate conditions of scarcity, despair, lack of affection, and a dark future for ourselves and our children, in this predatory neoliberal system. It was a Saturday morning in the middle of the cold Vancouver autumn of 2021. Señora Carmen was finishing the cleaning of a house. Suddenly the bell rings, and she runs to open the door.  “Hi Mr. John, how are you?” Mr. John owns a whole block of houses and apartments on the west side of the mainland. He is an Indian guy who has thrived socioeconomically from the rent of his Airbnb apartments. Señora Carmen cleans his apartments every time a new visitor leaves the unit. He does not seem happy with my presence. He immediately starts inspecting the floor and complains about a hair he has found on the carpet. In a hurry, we moved to the place we had previously agreed to meet, a nearby cafe.  “Cleaning is all about little details,” says Señora Carmen as if she were trying to excuse herself for an embarrassing moment. Then she continues. “So, you are no longer mortified for the unfortunate events that occurred at work,” she pauses and adds: “There will always be a new job for me.” Silence hangs in the air. Even though she looks old and tired, she begins telling me about her life while we commenced designing the arpilleras.  “I want to make a heart from parts and join parts of the heart,” she tells me full of conviction. “I had thought of a present, a past and a future. A broken heart. A heart that renews  42 itself. It is persistent, tenacious,” she exclaims and goes on: “You learn from your experiences, you renew yourself, get up, continue fighting, do not ever stop. A heart that has mended, that has become pretty, that has healed.”  All these powerful phrases sprout out of her mouth as a plentiful river. On Mending   Figure 6 Señora Carmen Mending Her Heart  We mend clothes that cannot be discarded because of our financial means or because the items have significance in our lives. Maybe, we have lived precious, unforgettable moments wearing them, or perhaps we have an eco-friendly mentality, i.e., we do not want to buy-wear- 43 dump clothes seasonally. A worldwide movement cares about raising awareness to teach people about the implications of an unsustainable fast fashion practice (Niinimäki et al., 2020). Señora Carmen, has also something to say about this practice.  “When I was little, my mother would sew all my clothes.”  These are the words that Señora Carmen uses when remembers her childhood.  “She had an old sewing machine that had a handwheel. Very old!” “In the past, you did not wear so many clothes,” she says with her eyes fixed in an imaginary horizon. This is another reference to the consequences of the neoliberal system and what consumerism has caused in our lives. It is translated into that urgent need to buy new clothes that later may end up in huge piles dumped in the driest desert of the world (Fast Fashion Dumped in Chile’s Atacama Desert, 2022).    Figure 7 Recycling Fabrics  After some pauses, she continues bringing memories of her motherhood.  44 “There was scarcity, so I had to make my daughter's dresses. I loved to sew because it was easy for me to do it. For the boys, I had to mend their worn-out shorts and underpants, or the buttons of the shirts that they would always bring home after being torn apart at school.” We, women, are mending, even the impossible, I think from the bottom of my soul. We mend our stories by remembering because while telling stories to other people, there is a teaching moment of giving out some learning we have acquired.  Situations become learning opportunities. This happened to me during the long period–belated due to Covid restrictions, family and life circumstances—of writing, art making, gathering materials, remembering the scene of my past life, transcribing stories, and much more. Everything has been a new situation with new illuminations, offering opportunities to rethink what I have learnt while embracing my textile art, which has been a new discovery.  Figure 8 Can a Heart Actually Repair After All This Use, Abuse, Exhaustion?  (Central Detail)   While choosing from scattered fabrics on the table, Señora Carmen continues her story.   45 “In my country, I had two jobs. First, I was an office clerk in the Hydroelectric Company. Then, I worked for the Tobacco Company for ten years. Both were well paid jobs, and at that time my children did not suffer any kind of scarcity.”  After a moment, she sighs and continues. “When the war started, I had no work for two years. So, I rented a garage where I would prepare and sell meals. It lasted for ten years, then I got sick. My bones were hurting. My legs. Everything.”  She touches her knees and closes her eyes as if remembering the dreadful pain that afflicted her at that moment.  She inhales and exhales in a long second, grabbing her textile, staring at the ceiling of the café where we were working, she swallows saliva to not cry. “I was tired,” she exclaims, “and the job I was doing was very hard. There was a moment I could not bear it. I would go to sleep at 4 pm. I would wake up at 3 am, then would cook everything again. Every day would be exactly the same.” Silvia Federici's (2018) words describe similar situations as she mentions that:  The majority of women live now in a state of chronic economic insecurity, daily worrying far more than men about their survival, and doing even more unpaid labour than before, domestic and otherwise, in order (for instance) to reduce utility and transport bills, find cheaper shops and bargains, stretch the lifetime of clothes, or market whatever they possess. The share economy has capitalised on this, fostering the illusion that we can all turn into small entrepreneurs, turning our cars into taxis, renting our home-spaces and clothes, and freelancing for the great variety of services which the well-to-do wish to outsource, from dog  46 walking to other forms of personal assistance. Thus, life has become for most women one of uninterrupted work, with no time to rest and recuperate or for more creative activities. (p. 181)   That is one of the many examples of how time, money and energy seems to evaporate. “I like the beautiful landscape that you made,” says Señora Carmen admiring the arpillera (see Figure 1) that I bring this day to show her my advances in this artmaking adventure we have both started. Then, she begins telling me her story of the day: “There was a time when I wanted to commit suicide. It’s called postpartum depression. I was depressed for a long time. I gave birth, and I was still depressed. I gave birth again, and I was still depressed.”  Figure 9 America 1  47 I can see powerful energy running through the veins of Latin-American women, this determination to not throw up your arms in despair, never, ever. I sometimes also do it. I sometimes even think about the worst, about resting forever, but when I remember that my eleven-year-old daughter has only me as her only support in life; I wake up and do not even let myself fall.  Italian feminist Silvia Federici refers to the reproductive work which ensures capitalist accumulation because it produces and reproduces the most essential commodity: the labor force and guarantees a series of activities that are not considered work and are not remunerated, but which are the counterpart of the increased productivity of wage labor. These activities will be mystified as personal services, and the woman's body itself will be considered and plundered as a natural resource. (Rosales, 2019, p. 4) “Ah, little flowers, I would love to cut little flowers!” says Señora Carmen in a playful tone, full of joy and surprise. I offer her material to pick up. It is like playing; she enjoys it like a little child. Then, I explain: “Here, like this. Separate the embroidery floss, separate the skein of thread into three instead of six.”  For a while she engages in separating the flosses and choosing the best options of the colours and fabrics for her arpillera. After a brief pause to sip her coffee, she continues.  “When I was working, my children took care of each other, all by themselves.” I meditate on this and presume that this would have been impossible for me. My kids were two and four when we started our new life as a uniparental family. At that time, I saw myself with the obligation of spending most of my income on nannies or babysitters. Moreover, I began working and accepting any teaching job at some universities, even if the last lesson to teach was at 9:30 pm, because you needed to pay for groceries and bills.”  48 That story can be replicated thousands of times in places like my colonized continent. Women are required to work the same as a man, even though our mind is at home, thinking about our child who had a fever last night, who needs help with their homework, who has a medical or dental appointment or counselling sessions, and the groceries you need to buy for breakfast the next day. This list could go on ad infinitum. Here, the words of Segato (2001) resonate, and reinforce Federici's words; "patriarchy is radically aggravated and transformed in a colonial-modern order that is lethal for women" (p. 200). Here, it is where women are, exhausting all our mental, economic, and physical energy due to the vital task of raising children alone. Rosi Braidotti (1994) mentions:  The professional success and wellbeing of the women of today depends to a great extent on their endurance and determination in an environment whose attitude to career women is contradictory, to say the least. The economic contradictions concerning the female labour force point toward more theoretical problems and cultural representations of women in the age of modernity. I would sum them up as the simultaneous need for women to become more active and present in society, but also the continuing need for their exploitation. (p. 239)  Admiration/Sacrifice?  49 Figure 10 Women Abuse is Ancestral. “Le pones, ñeque, pichon, te las rebuscas,”20 as Señora Carmen would tell me as she supported my own fight. I think to myself that we repair and mend stories, clothes, and events of our lives, that is, all around us, even our lives.  “You have a heavy burden. Too much for only one person.” Says Señora Carmen with a tone that breaks my heart. Then, I think that we repair the damage caused to our families, economies, and existence. “Life is not easy for anyone.” I utter with certainty.  We suffer from different situations in our daily lives. No one is free from domestic hardships. In our societies of oppression, especially towards our gender, where unfair dynamics are present every day, especially in the heart of our families, in our mothers obliging us to be responsible for the household chores because we were supposed to do it. Where the mantra of their logical thinking would be: We would be women one day, and boys needed their space and time to have fun. I see this as an urgent need to consider the wellbeing of our daughters, granddaughters, and next female generations and, therefore, the future of the whole planet. Understanding different ways of coexisting, living, and doing our part in the world respectfully,  20 What a strong, resilient, and creative person you are.  50 like a "desire to be in conjunction, in communication, that makes a community" (Segato, 2018, p. 206). The Latin-American mindset is structured, so that collaboration and solidarity are embedded in the culture, always thinking about collective wellbeing. It is a force that drags you and compels you to act in solidarity with the ones in need. "This is an altogether different way of practicing politics, a politics of bonds, a management of intimacy, of nearness and not of the distances of protocol and bureaucratic abstraction" (Segato, 2018, p. 207). I see it in Señora Carmen's words, as well as on my own words. We understand that there is something proper about our gender, and proper about our culture; there is a need to do the correct thing, and a need for women to sacrifice themselves for their families. The Arpilleras  Figure 11 Can a Heart Actually Repair After All This Use, Abuse, Exhaustion? (Detail)  On this occasion, I tell Señora Carmen about the different groups that nowadays embroider as a means of discussion and political protest, thus making visible, various problems affecting marginalized groups all over the planet. I tell her about the arpilleras from Chile (see  51 Chapter 1) and how this collective artmaking as a socially engaged practice empowered devastated women in my country in the seventies and eighties. I highlight the fact that this artmaking practice knitted bonds of companionship, solidarity, and sisterhood. Also bringing economic support for their already impoverished families. I also told her about my desire to pursue research involving "Social justice art education, which is grounded in the desire to create awareness about sociopolitical issues, challenge common sense attitudes, mobilize civic participation, take action to shift unequal power relations in our society, and work to change policies" (Desai, 2010, p. 13). Lacy (2010) also mentions that "Organizing, protesting, and working to build networks of solidarity to address pressing local and global issues are now part of the art process for many artists and art collectives" (p. 17). Certainly, Arpilleras de Chile was a form of protesting art, and it continues being so, the same as the embroidery movement. Latin American feminist embroidering is an act of feminist struggle, different from the image of a passive lady who observes the world and embroiders after dinner in the living room. Our action is subversive. It fights against the rule, the norm, the established, and the traditional. We embroider from another place with a purpose in mind; we do not wish to have a shallow message in the tapestry; we embroider because we have some critical business at hand, that is, telling our stories, telling our political struggles to one another, sharing, and learning. "One speaks as a woman to empower women, to activate sociosymbolic changes in their condition: this is a radically anti-essentialist position" (Braidotti, 1994, p. 4).  52  Figure 12 My Embroidered Bridal Shawl  Embroidery turns into the weapon utilized by feminist movements. Women are being ironic, even sarcastic, in different subversive acts. I have to mention here, the work of the feminists who cry out against femicides, especially in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador; all these sisters with needle and thread, who draw, write, and communicate through embroidering. As Emery states:  Needlework was a reminder of women’s oppression under patriarchy but, concurrently, needlework carried with it its own culture, specific to women’s her-story. In an era when women’s liberation critiqued the domestic as oppressive to women’s lives, feminist artists working with needlework saw a radical possibility in bringing attention to the domestic as not simply a site of oppression, but of creativity. (Emery, 2019, p. 103)   53 Braidotti echoes these words; "Nomadic subjects are capable of freeing the activity of thinking from the hold of phallocentric dogmatism, returning thought to its freedom, its liveliness, its beauty. There is a strong aesthetic dimension in the quest for alternative nomadic figuration" (Braidotti, 1994, p. 8). Therefore, this feminist or critical nomadic nature opens new scenarios for possibilities to embrace feminine relatedness. For Braidotti (1994) women are Nomadic subjects due to their flexibility to inhabit non-static or determined traditional conservative places of the mind. We are creators, and this also reinforces the act of embroidering.  Nomadic subject functions as a relay team: s/he connects, circulates, moves on; s/he does not form identifications but keeps on coming back to regular intervals. The nomad is a transgressive identity, whose transitory nature is precisely the reason why s/he can make connections at all. Nomadic politics is a matter of bonding, of coalitions, of interconnections. (p. 35)   Socially engaged arts and textile arts are particularly open to the possibility of artists connecting with an/other. In this study, we created bonds as well. Those connections are bridges that join different individualities in a collective moment, a feminine and feminist moment. We try to make the world a better place for all of us; human, non-human, all this diverse universe where we co-exist. The words of Dipiti Desai (2019) are echoed in this research; "Art, for historically marginalized people is a form of illumination because of the epistemic violence perpetrated by the culture of invisibility" (p. 15). In the invisible work of cleaning services, these women invested precious time away from their homes, families, and lives. Therefore, exposing the  54 experiences of people's daily lives as they undertake chores is essential to recognize their contribution to society. There are lives, with time and energy invested in them. They make sacrifices, give attention, offer dedication, and even provide devotion. Their alterity is present here. I see it in the arpilleras, a reconfiguration of our narratives, and in the shared moments where we reconstructed our memories.  It is in that attempt that socially engaged artists are involved in what Segato (2018) mentions about Women's history as it "lays stress on roots and relations of nearness. We must recuperate this way of practicing politics in intimate spaces, places of close bodily contact and few formal protocols" (p. 207). I acknowledge that this has worked for me in this research as well as in my experience working with women in my country. We created bonds of nearness through the artmaking practice. We have been able to build strong ties which allow us to speak with a sense of safety and respectful reciprocity. In addition, Braidotti's (1994) words resonate with the ultimate target of the feminist embroidering groups "the most difficult task is how to put the will to change together with the desire for the new that implies the construction of new desiring subjects" (pp. 30-31). Collaboration  Figure 13 We Always Bloom Together  55   Señora Carmen proudly shows me what she did.  “Look what you helped me start. I put these little beads.”  She is full of self-admiration for her achievements in textile art. But then, she retells a new chapter of her life in El Salvador.  “I was a volunteer in an organization. It was my vocation. Helping other women to fight addictions. They were groups of collective psychotherapy of around five hundred people gathered in an auditorium. This organization helped me and gave me strength to continue with my life,” shares Señora Carmen with a bit of pride and a bit of sadness. This experience caught my attention and inspired me to ask myself how I could contribute to society. When you have experienced hardships, you want to help others who have lived through circumstances like yours own since you want to see them thrive, improve, and better their living conditions. This resonates with Segato's (2010) words about Latino women; "In this communal life, in the village-world, ethnographic evidence shows that women are the subjects of rootedness, guardians of the environment who practice a politics of another kind" (p. 207). I offer Señora Carmen various fabrics, and she chooses a burgundy and green dotted one. She explains to me what she thinks she could do. However, she only asks me for half of it. She worries about my tight budget.  Then, she starts sharing a new chapter of this storytelling/artmaking journey.  “I had five children,” Señora Carmen says proudly. Then her tone becomes melancholic: “After my son left, I had the other four to care about. They were two girls, ages two and three, and a boy of eight, and the eldest was a girl of ten. That was something very, very strong. Four  56 children in your care without a partner is something that causes you to have days when you eat and days when you have nothing to eat.” Food insecurity is something I have learned to know here. Yes, in the First World. When Covid hit. Students organized an amazing food hub, run by a PhD student from Nigeria. She gathered people from the EDCP department, and from the church where she attends. There, I had the chance to experience solidarity at its best. I noticed that people, especially those from colonised countries, also struggle, fight and are creative in finding ways to survive (Federici, 2019). Here is where our both stories intermingle; I also had children with two different partners. Our dis/similar stories made us sisters in experience. This bonding connects with Lacy's (2010) words about socially engaged artists; "Generating dialogue and raising awareness or consciousness about a social/political issue is certainly part of the process of artistic activism" (p. 18). In Latin America, despite our differences in physical appearance, language, and cultural and economic background, many stories connect us. Stories of sacrifice. We as women have understood this since times immemorial, always giving everything to others, never for ourselves, always putting our necessities at the end of the long list of priorities. I asked her about her hardships and noticed that we shared the same sacrifices. Señora Carmen tells me: “The little girls had no money because their father would not support them economically, while the older ones would. I used to reproach myself for a long time. Everything I had I gave away.” Here, I pause, I think to myself: “This is an exact mirror of my life, replicating in the mirrors of all our gender. So true!” According to Segato (2018):  57 Masculinity rules by means of a primal and persistent pedagogy. It teaches the expropriation of value and consequent domination. The patriarchal, misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic violence of our late modernity–our era of human rights and of the UN–is thus precisely a symptom of patriarchy's unfettered expansion. (p. 199)  It is as if we would have inserted it in our collective memory to be next to our children, sacrifice ourselves for them, especially if they are men, and most of all, to leave ourselves behind. The world is not ours. It is someone else's.  To go on and on, adjectivizing my otherness. I could continue for days and nights, months and years listing the many traits. that made me be "the other," as most of us are. It is an unprivileged place. because the world does not belong to us. Also, because we, at a certain point, believe we do not belong, because walking and living in this world It is made for some other people, for the ones who are so powerful that they can buy satellites, hide the sun's rays, bury nuclear weapons, and contaminate rivers where communities’ dwell. Water cemeteries where ancestors' bodies lie. Extract the minerals, the sacred hills.  58 since everything turns out to be commercialized even our memories, our sacred places and out culture. We, the other, los nadie21, have no place to go.  To these words that burst out of my heart, I can only cite Segatos’s wise words here (2022); “The dual matrix ruled by the mutual reciprocity changes into the binary modern matrix, in which all alterity is a function of the One, and every Other has to be assimilated into a framework of universal reference” (p. 200). In such a way women have the power in their hands, as they participate in doing and making things, constructing worlds. Fixing, mending, repairing, positioning, re-establishing the place, always giving everyone the respect, they deserve. As part of this alterity, protagonists, defenders, avengers, and priestesses since times immemorial reflect that feminist thinking acknowledges equity. Still, critical nomadic subjects, as feminist individuals, we accept the other for being the other.    21  “Los nadie” means the nobody people. It is a reference to the others named as los nadie (the no one) in the book El Libro de Los Abrazos (1989) by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano.   59  Figure 14 Mother  “I was thinking of making a pillow bag or making more blankets. Blankets from pieces of fabric.” Señora Carmen continues creating while making in her mind, in the world.   According to Greene (1995) the arts have the potential to open human imagination towards the unknown and uncertain. Señora Carmen was an imaginative girl when she married and got pregnant.  “I was a mother at the age of fourteen. I married at thirteen a man who was twenty-four years older than me. I was literally a kid. I thought as a girl. I wanted to dance, listen to music, go to parties, but he would say that I could not do it because I had made a commitment.” Although I was twice the age of Señora Carmen when I got pregnant and married, I felt the same freshness, irresponsibility, and desire to go out, meet people, make my art and dance. There is an intrinsic need to feel free and run away from responsibilities. It was as if you were sure that the baby you were carrying in your womb would be your child and that there would not be a shared responsibility during the long period of bringing them up.  60 “Women have been mistreated for centuries, extracted and abused.” It is my own voice thinking out loud. Probably, this is what happened to both of us. It has caused the impoverishment of our lives, economies, dreams, possibilities, and potentialities. Segato’s (2022) words support my words here; "The phrase ‘patriarchal-colonial modernity’ adequately describes the priority of patriarchy as an appropriator of women's bodies and can thus serve as a name for this first colonial condition" (p. 20). Señora Carmen takes a long pause, and then speaks out loud, with a lot of energy flowing through her vocal cords: “What a terrible destiny. Isn't it? We cannot allow this to happen! We were kind of objects! An animal that pleases the male and that is all! Like a foal that does not speak and can be inseminated and then left alone. And she is left alone with a pregnancy.” Or, as Braidotti (1994) says, "Female mothers-machines" (p. 53). Those strong words spoken from the bottom of her heart are so certain. They are truthful. In patriarchal societies, where the State ignores these problems, society puts the blame on women. Furthermore, this patriarchal system erodes the rest of the family structure, children especially, and supportive grandparents too. “That is why I do not criticize other women who give up their kids in adoption. Because it is hard. It is a heavy burden,” Señora Carmen says with clarity and continues. “You know, when I met this group.” I met many women who had abandoned their kids! At that moment, I thought to myself –This woman must have been desperate to take such a decision. Insane, desperate, alone in life. Without a supportive partner.”  She then meditates and recalls;  61 "God has been around me since I was in my mother's womb, even though she gave me away for adoption. I guess there were many economic problems. The same as now. Mothers did not know what to do with their kids," says Señora Carmen with disappointment. Migrating  Figure 15 Our Migration  “I will keep this fabric. I promise this week I will work in something that I am thinking about right now. I already have an idea. A table runner”, then Señora Carmen continues telling me about her immigration process.  “I came to Canada in 2010. I came here with a residency. You enter here through the big wide-open door, and they give you a document, and then you are legal, everywhere you go.”  62 Señora Carmen reminds me of this sense of liminality and precarity as a temporary resident. To be in this place trying to fit, trying to thrive. Struggling daily to feed the family and fight with regrets because you miss people, smells, streets and love from your relatives, friends, and well-known faces. You miss the family gathering to celebrate a birthday or just the joyfulness of being alive. We compare actual lives in two different cities in Latin America, and the cost of housing and food in Vancouver is even cheaper. Even though Vancouver is the most expensive city in North America, we notice that you can obtain better salaries and have more job opportunities here.        "Life standards are higher every day in my country, and there you do not earn the same as here therefore it is useless to think of going back there. For example: The rent of a small condo costs you a hundred dollars a few years ago, now it is three hundred or more. It is terrible! Now, not even las tortillas taste the same. Everything is so different. Everything is more commercial!" Señora Carmen exclaims with enthusiasm.  For most of us, this significant shift, move, and framework change has transformed how we see and experience the world. Then it was my turn to express my feelings about the past in my birthplace.  “In Chile, I worked a lot. That bustling city – Santiago, the capital–means work and stress to me. It is an overpopulated capital that is highly polluted. So, people are always in a hurry, looking unhappy, with gloomy, sad faces observing the pavement.” There seems to be a constant pattern; the stories that brought us here are not that different. It could be a political situation, a big country that interfered in our lives, unemployment, political unrest, unfair gender relationships in our jobs, normalized domestic  63 violence, overexploitation of the role of the women as superheroes, capable of everything, of the impossible. Estrangement  Figure 16 Finding Ourselves in the City of Vancouver  Language barriers are one of the main problems immigrants face every day. As an English teacher in Chile and an artist, I noticed that the lack of English language was one of the main barriers in their search for a better or lighter job. This boundary created aloofness in their lives and constructed a wall that isolated them in their own communities or families, not allowing them to move further to develop even more. Those little details can make your day become a nightmare. The shame and lack of connection with the whole society is a barrier which keeps them in that area where they only work in their Latino jobs. “I took lessons in a school where they teach only to immigrants. There, the lessons were very repetitive, so I quit,” Señora Carmen starts this part of her story.  From my perspective, as an ESL teacher in a bilingual institute for Latin-American immigrants, I see it as a matter of dire need, a survival matter that will change a whole family's reality. Language mastery or knowledge can prevent a child from being bullied at school, a tired  64 worker not to be abused by their boss, and the legal terms of the working conditions could be negotiated in more fair terms. However, I have noticed that all these immigrant experiences can turn into a nightmare without enough funding to pay for health insurance since, as an illegal, the Public Health System will not cover the hospitalization or medical treatment. If they are caught, they must return to their country, penniless and with their dreams faded in the distance, like a watercolour.  “I was scared of speaking English, asking questions to any person in the streets, because not all the people are nice. I have met only ninety percent of nice people. The other ten percent were not.” Reminds Señora Carmen with a sign of sorrow escaping from her eyes. “I got lost. I got lost for hours,” she declares with a sense of tiredness and anguish as if recalling the event would make her body feel the pain again.  “Once, when I finished my language lessons, I took the right way instead of the left one. I went to Metrotown. When I realized my mistake, I went back. I got home at midnight. I had walked for hours. When I got home, I fell to my bed, with clothes and shoes on. The following day my legs were swollen.” She showed me how swollen they were in her hands, then Señora Carmen continued. “I had to quit going to that school due to my shifts at work. Those were sad, but on the other, here is the opposite. I feel independent. I understand a little. I buy my own things. Now, I can even go to the bank alone. My daily living experience is easy for me now.” This reminds me of the first weekend I arrived in this foreign land. The exuberant vegetation. The beauty of the landscape caused me a lot of anxiety. This urgent need to go out and know every corner of the territory, like beaches, forests, and lakes. All this, together with having a couple of teenagers unwilling to go anywhere. I took buses with my daughter and tried  65 to follow guidance from maps. Either way, I got lost. I could not find the Aquarium, so we never visited it. We tried to walk all the way to Stanley Park to get there, but we walked and walked and did not find the place.  Figure 17 The Exhuberant Vegetation of These Lands  I realized how lost, far, and lonely I was in the middle of that warm end-of-summer weekend. As I was walking with my eight-year-old daughter– who is twelve now–, I turned it into a positive experience and started taking photos, admiring the landscape, forgetting about the vast space in my heart which longed for a familiar face or spot in this city that one day would become ours. We dreamed of buying a bike. I had no clue where I was or how far I had arrived. However, I had the knowledge of English in my favour. Therefore, I was not completely lost.  This overwhelming feeling crushes the middle of your existence as a little twig on a windy day. It is this sensation, a sort of smell, a pain produced by this dis/agreeable isolation.  66 There, I find myself, from time to time, navigating an intricate labyrinth of numbered streets, like a chess board that is divided diagonally by the Kingsway. There, I see the mixture of many languages, nationalities, costumes, clothing, tones, rhythms, smells and social differences. The whole world inhabits this territory. We are all immigrants, except the safeguards who have inhabited this paradise since remote times: the First Nations Peoples. Despite our significant differences, we share that sparkle in our eyes and determination to do what we came to do: work, study, accompany someone, or even discover new space. Knowing that we always might return to a place frozen in time in case of urgent need.  On the one hand, there is an immense amount of tiredness, but there is also a tremendous amount of uncertainty of not knowing what is ahead for us. Every day is something new in this city. A new face, a new park, dancing clouds whose different rhythms project colourful shades, alike the different hues of blues, grays, and white, or the symphony of colours that spring flowers or autumn leaves present before our eyes. We are accompanied by the non-humans that inhabit these lands; ravens, squirrels, a mother raccoon carrying her babies, coyotes crossing the forest lanes in a hurry, and the invisible world that lays in the underground, inhabited by mycelium, insects, rock formations, spores, and so many other species.  All these new experiences, landscapes, and images frame my daily visits to the sacred and well-kept city of Vancouver, the territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlil̓wətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations People. This multicultural tapestry structures my daily experiences. Here is where my degree in Linguistics finds delight, especially on the only bus that runs from UBC to the Joyce train station. That bus is a carpet of colours and sounds. People coming back from work or school. They look tired but happy, satisfied, and thoughtful. To my eyes they earn enough money to pay bills and rent, have some spare time,  67 even buy non-essential stuff to send money to their families back in their homelands, and enjoy themselves individually as well. With the use of cell phones people communicate with their dear ones, therefore, those wonderful, crowded busses, are a whole incredible world. You can hear English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Punjabi, Tamil, Farsi, Arabic, Greek, Vietnamese, Somali, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and more. It is a present-day Tower of Babel, or a UN meeting. All of us sharing a moment to communicate with our dear ones back in the country that haunts us at times, that calls us, that has our loved ones, but also the country that expelled us, that forced us to leave, or maybe the country that gave us the opportunity by creating the conditions of discomfort to make us come, to find a better life.   Figure 18 Chile Was the Country that Kicked Me Out  68 “I love this pair of tiny scissors,” exclaims Señora Carmen, like a little girl playing with a new toy.  She has been telling me important, profound truths about life, important teachings, while cutting tiny flowers stamped on a piece of fabric she has chosen from the bundle of discarded clothes and materials I have been carrying to this meaningful, profound encounter of artmaking. Señora Carmen expresses real woman pride for me. “I admire you on how you have been finding yourself in Vancouver. You have grown up. How did you dare to fly and run away to this place?” I blushed. My trip to the far North was a daring insubordinate move. Leaving family, friends, jobs, lifestyle and culture, schools and parents was a highly criticized journey and a long-time planned need to skip the paved road to perpetuate what the neoliberal system had cemented for me. I bet these sentences are the same for a high number of people who dwell in this country. This is a place that brings us together. That is something I have brought with me to intermingle, share, and learn with the people who live here. In the words of Braidotti (1994), we –nomads– are against the establishment per se.  Here is how to reconcile partiality and discontinuity with the construction of new forms of interrelatedness and collective political projects. The nomadism in question here refers to the critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behavior. (p. 5) Rooting Our culture, our roots are undeniable, the strength of the soil under our feet, the lovely mothers who worked hard and  69 worked the land next to their male partners, would be one thing. the other would be the trust and love. for the bounty nature provide us, clear waters, and clear airs, uncontaminated thoughts.   Figure 19 Raíces22/ Roots   22 This word is the translation of roots in Spanish.  70 Digging into my roots and identity has been a constant task since my arrival in Canada. Decentering myself from my tiny country that, in the past, felt majestic since I didn’t have experiences in other countries to make a comparison. Today, after three years, I can share some observations with Braidotti (1994) as well: A person who is in transit between the languages, neither here nor there, is capable of some healthy skepticism about steady identities and mother tongues. In this respect, the polyglot is a variation on the theme of critical nomadic consciousness; being in between languages constitutes a vantage point in deconstructing identity. (p. 12)  In Canada, citizens tend to have a general idea of their origin or ancestry. In Chile, we scarcely mention this fact. Maybe because it is more than 500 years of a violent colonization process. There is a significant denial of our roots and mostly admiration for the European or North American people and culture, "a continent claimed by those who have deserted their non-white ancestry and their belonging to an American, human, and historical landscape" (Segato, 2018, p. 207). All the above translated into despising our brown skin, hiding our prominent cheekbones, big teeth, and thick dark hair. Most of our last names were interchanged for other more European sounding names (Ponce, 2019). Many wanted to look more European, to use the cannon of the occidental alphabet, where letters and sounds could be integrated, to be part of this new world, the world of the colonizer and their ethnocentric worldview. Here, Segato (2022) gives light to this undeniable fact;   71 What emerges in our multitudinous mestizaje is the stain of something like a generic and general non-whiteness23. It is a non-whiteness24 without an ethnicity, without a society, without a particular culture25. It is the trace of our history that emerges and appears as a link or lineage, historically constituted and written on the skin, a darkness that gathers density in some places and urban peripheries. At a certain moment, this is also a trait that stains us all: again, those who live in our landscapes are all non-white when we travel to the imperial North. (pp. 162-163)   We come from homogenous groups in Latin America, and we share the common language of the Castello: this language conveys world views. From the very moment that we have things in common, such as the accumulation of years, versus the being/ dwelling in a certain age, is a big difference that makes us see the world differently. The difference in our idiomatic expressions is not an obstacle but enriches our long conversations. In addition, the new religion, Catholicism, imposed, proposed, transformed, assimilated, and recreated, has been present since those times and has become part of our existence. We are the survivors, and this new ethnicity is painted in new colours, with features that make us look more European but darker and shorter here in these northern territories. During these encounters, we managed to start our individual projects, and at home, she would continue and finish. Señora Carmen let me transcribe some of the phrases shared with me during these recorded encounters. I showed her some little stars that belonged to my daughter's blouse. She loves it as a little girl. She wants half of it.   23 In the original text, this phrase was not in italic, but it had quotation marks. 24 Idem. 25 Idem.  72 “I want to make a bag like this!” Señora Carmen likes my bag. She wants to embellish everything. I offer her different possibilities on how we should finish or continue the artmaking. I clearly explain to her that she has no obligation to give me the arpilleras that she made. We both must get into an agreement. I give her the possibility to make a decision. Here, it is important to pay attention about the way that socially engaged arts: Challenge hierarchical power relations and work toward the decolonial option in how we see, know, and live in our society. Artistic organizing is grounded in collective artmaking, which is a process of learning to work across differences to be effective in shifting the balance of power in society. As a constitutive activity in political activism and social movements, collectivity is a form of cultural production that is not about individual self-expression, or even political expression, but rather, it is about democratizing social change that requires building networks of solidarity. (Lacy, 2010, p. 12)   From those words expressed by Lacy, is that this arpillera-suitcase will travel to other people.26 “Do you need more material?” I ask Señora Carmen.   “No, it's not necessary. I already have the outline. The idea. I just want to do some more crosses of this. Look, in different colors,” she says with excitement. “So that it's like the stitching of the heart.” Here we speak about lack of time/space since the other participants could not make it.  26 We have made a final decision about the conclusion of this project. This will be explained in further detail in chapter 6.  73 In her strong and clear voice, Señora Carmen tells me, “All women are pretty busy. They need to earn money to make ends meet in this new land we have all arrived. So here, we try to survive.” This is perfectly clear to me, and as a result this research ended up with just two of us having warm conversations across six weeks, in intervals of ninety minutes, where time was frozen for a while, and memories and imagination used the time space and recreated moments with the help of coloured threads, fabrics and discarded rags. Señora Carmen is a woman who has experienced hardships as many other women in the world, though helping me in this research turns her in someone especial to me. She has helped me and has dedicated her free time to tell her stories. Her experiential wisdom amazes me. These words below reflect all the wisdom she has gained through hardships and her whole life. “We need spiritual space. Complicate ourselves way less. We are sinking. Life is so short. I have already lived enough. Now, I just need some time to reflect. I almost died in the month of March. When you're close to dying you know how much life is worth. And my life has been turned upside down. I have been working a very long time. I have forgiven myself for things I didn't do before, my lack of education, my lack of resources. After the storm, there is always a rainbow. That is the way life is. Since I came here, it has been very hard. Not only for me. Here we are to help each other.” Señora Carmen’s voice turns out soft and tender.  She asks me to write La Vida es hoy with the black marker, she says it is a meaningful sentence for her.  Now, I understand how lucky we have been with the experiences we have lived and the great understandings we have received. Life has been tremendously generous to us, and we have been smart enough to follow our paths, dreams, or little lights on the road. Here we are, in the  74 paradise land of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səlil̓wətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations People, working, living, learning, enjoying, and eager to remain, no more movement, just stay here, rest here. Now, I see this place as the last stage, as travellers who find their destination.   Figure 20 La Vida es Hoy/ Life Is Today  Her wise words follow. “So, you are on a stage where you see life in perspective. You feel grateful for the bad things. For me, the basis of a healthy lifestyle is to be thankful. You are in a stage where you look back at all the bad events and say thanks. Despite the suffering.”  Señora Carmen is in a stage of her life where she can look backwards and see that it is far away, in the distance. Therefore, it is no longer a burden but a blessing. Now she is quiet, worried only about herself. Fighting for herself to thrive in this society.  “Mariela, I want to be a volunteer again. Help other women. As soon as I retire, I will do that. Also, travel. Visiting my grandchildren. I am worried about my mind. I do not want to get to be 75 and forget my life so senility would come so fast.”  75 “So, that is my life; full of hardships and beautiful stories!”                        76 Chapter 5: The Final Arpilleras   Figure 21 Preparing the Final Arpillera   Two discussion topics stand out after writing, reading, revising, and editing the previous chapters of this thesis. The first is the transformative and empowering potential of dialogical practice which promotes self-awareness through building bonds of affection during a collaborative artmaking activity. The second is the importance and benefits of socially engaged arts as a powerful tool that contributes to raising awareness about marginalized groups in society. The two topics are intertwined, entangled, and braided since, at times, their content, definitions, examples and references can be interchangeable. They constitute a metaphor for the textile art of the arpilleras, where threads, flosses, and rags are mixed and combined. All in all, they are both considerably related due to their impact on society. The Transformative and Empowering Potential of Dialogical Practice in the Artmaking of Arpilleras. I engage in dialogue because I recognize the social and not merely the individualistic character of the process of knowing. In this sense, dialogue presents itself as an indispensable  77 component of the process of both learning and knowing (Freire & Macedo, 1995, p. 379). The legacy of pedagogue Paulo Freire has permeated this study and has been illuminated by important concepts such as dialogue, praxis, and conscientization, among others. Dialogue in Freirean pedagogy is tremendously crucial for the process of learning and teaching. In this place, there are no differences; the voice of every individual (teacher and learners) is as important as the other. This must occur in an environment of respect, love, care, reciprocity, and commitment. Freire (2000) mentions that “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow for ambivalent behaviour” (p. 69). Also, he would mention, “Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were” (p. 70). A similar type of transformation (rebirth) occurred for me during this research, throughout the learning circles, as Freire would call them, where we engaged in meaningful topics that were important to us. Both of us participated in an egalitarian way. There were no hierarchies of any kind, and everyone had their voice. In the case of this research, Señora Carmen (who is not an artist) and I engaged in dialogue in each of the artmaking encounters. As a result, I witnessed moments of sadness, excitement, joy, and transformation in both of us.  One important aspect that I discovered while doing this research is that: To live the life of an artist who is also a researcher and teacher is to live a life of awareness, a life that permits openness to the complexity around us, a life that intentionally sets out to perceive things differently. (Irwin, 2004, p. 33)   78 This was the same quality of awareness that Señora Carmen acquired while engaged in conversations. She reflected on her life while choosing materials and shapes to compose these arpilleras. She perceived things differently, the same as Irwin mentions (2004); that is to say; this "awareness" might be transferred not only to artists but to any person. The thing is that there needs to be a set of ideal situations for this to occur. These perfect moments are free/leisure time, willingness to understand the process you are getting involved in, and being open and willing to discuss specific topics that make you and the others similar. Therefore, sharing similar experiences, the same gender, language, and social circumstances allowed the flow of conversation freely and deeply due to a high sense of empathy, sympathy, and complicity. Here, the words of Greene (1998): "Freedom shows itself or comes into being when individuals come together in a particular way, when they are authentically present to one another (without masks, pretences, badges of office) when they have a project they can mutually pursue" (p. 55), supports the idea of human authenticity when we encounter with Others while working together in an engaged project. The outcomes were not only artifacts but also bonds of affection, and I can tell they constitute one of the most positive outcomes of these encounters. The other rewarding and relevant aspect are the transformation that occurred within both of us. In the words of LeBlanc (2015), "Contexts, materials, and processes create transformative events" (p. 367), These words resonate with me now, and I am confident that I witnessed this occurrence. “You cannot imagine the great favour you make in being with me here this afternoon.” “I go deep inside, and suddenly everything gets out of my head.” Señora Carmen would say, in one of our last encounters.  79  Figure 22 Women Mending Rags  In this community of women (sorority), through affection, care, and respect, we engaged in intense conversation topics that had a transformative effect on us, that is, we were different after this experience (Freire, 2000). Feminists have sought, throughout the history of our movement, to recreate sororities that could provide protective shields for our spaces, forgetting or perhaps not recognizing that these shields always existed in the communal world, until they were dislodged when association, representation, and the work of management were captured by a public sphere that totalized politics. (Segato, 2018, p. 206)  These words give us clues on how our past congregated and kept us together and stronger, which was lost due to social, political, geographical, and economic systems, and circumstances. Therefore, constructing or creating a ‘protective shield’ allowed the research and us to be transformed. All these transformations occurred while our hearts, hands, and heads (the three Hs) worked together, producing a deep connection with ourselves and the other. For example, there were these instances of total calmness where Señora Carmen's and my own  80 thoughts flowed while engaged in the artmaking of the arpilleras. As Lacy (2010) mentions, "Art making can be many things: a compulsion, a profession, a spiritual practice. “Making (a word we artists are fond of using, removing both object and subject to focus on the act) is innately optimistic" (p. 298). In the same way, the results of this experience were positive. Even though many passages told during the encounters were not. Greene (1995) mentions that the empowering drive of the arts inhabits the potential to open our imagination toward the unimagined and the uncertain. Therefore, giving people a chance to express and discover their dormant creativity and imagination contributes to increasing their well-being since, they can acquire a sense of self-admiration and find self-confidence. All this has immense value, significantly improving people's self-esteem and dignity. These potentials are there expecting to be acknowledged since everyone possesses them, but they are unaware due to many causes; some of these could be everyday life responsibilities, lifestyles, economies, relationships, and more. In the case of the participants of this research, the causes are related to life circumstances, especially work, economic deprivation, childcare, low self-esteem, and more. Greene ‘s thoughts about being awake and reflect on your own life, (1995) add more strength to Freire's words: “Without the ability to think about yourself and reflect on your life, there is no awareness, no consciousness. Consciousness does not come automatically; it comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious.” (p. 35) The emancipatory feminist approach this research has taken has benefitted from conversation and a mindset we have acquired. Our conditions of oppression include being single mothers coming from Latin-American countries, where patriarchy-based social systems, neoliberal economic systems, narcotrafficking, fierce extraction of natural resources, and military interventions have been the common denominator. We faced intense situations where we both had to reinvent ourselves out  81 of nothing–adjusting to parenting in both feminine and masculine roles for our children–also assuming exhausting or poorly paid jobs, responsibilities, and household chores. These conditions have profoundly impacted our self-esteem and self-care since we have been replaced by someone who needs us more and demands more attention and dedication, that is our children. After years of work in my studio, teaching ceramics to women, I discovered that through artmaking, women would let themselves go and open their minds in this protected s/place (de Cosson, 2003). The same happened in this research. There would be this moment of making something different than a paid job but something meaningful, resulting from their imagination, skill, and sense of beauty. It would be their choices, turning into tangible objects that they would finally exhibit to their families and loved ones. This resulted in something that would make them feel proud of themselves, as it also increased their self-esteem, find self-inspiration, and take distance from their domestic realities. There, they would open their hearts and let themselves speak and tell their stories. They would reflect on jobs, partners, children, families, society, arts, materials, and techniques. There would also be reflexion (Ellis, 2004) (Gouzouasis, in press 2023a) because I, the teacher, was being reflexed on their own stories. In the words of Freire (2005), oppressed people must overcome their condition by regaining their sense of humanity, stating that they (the oppressed) play a key role in this transformative process. This empowerment is attained through self-awareness, dialogue, praxis, and the given space to create, work, and liberate what is heavy and hidden in our hearts. These were events that happened to me, and from these words, I can say that the same happened to Señora Carmen, as well, as her words clearly express; “Having your company and witnessing your fight helps me. As an elder, I love to see women who fight. It helps me realize that women always fight to get on with their lives. I see  82 women from different countries and cultures, and I like to learn about that. That is why I admire how you have done so much during your whole life as a single mom.” Greene (2018) poses the following, "To be moral involves taking a position towards that matrix, thinking critically about what is taken for granted" (p. 222). This research evidenced the positive effects of critical dialogue produced in the following quote about informal education, Feminists have learned that efforts to empower adult women must include literacy training and transformative education content through non-formal and informal learning. Irrespective of whether or not the programme content and processes raise one's awareness of exploitation, literacy per se does not empower students. However, it provides women a greater sense of self-efficacy, which can be a precursor to empowerment. Cultivation of empowerment involves collective action as a tool for effective agency, a task often conducted by women's organisations is multidimensional and a difficult undertaking, demanding the development of skills and strategies to engage in political action, beyond awareness-raising and the reflection of one's social and economic environment. (Stromquist, 2002, p. 548)  Therefore, in this informal education (artmaking of arpilleras workshop), our conversations spun around topics of exploitation, abuse, empowerment, and agency. All these concepts were fertile for transformation. Freire (2005) mentions that; "the pedagogy of the oppressed is the pedagogy of the people engaged in the fight for their own liberation," and" that there must be reflection through "dialoguing with the people about their actions" (p. 53). Along the different encounters, a  83 transformation took place, since there was the confidence to engage in dialogue and speak freely about past experiences, but also about what we discovered together, about the domestic abuse, the burden of raising children alone, the dire need to find a job that was compatible with our imperative task of being a 24/7 mother, the whole immigration process, and our present circumstances, most of them depicted in our arpilleras.  By telling others who are similar, as it occurs in healing circles, we are made aware that something is stuck on our shoes that does not allow us to walk quietly; it bothers us constantly. We learned to walk this way and resigned ourselves to this stagnant and oppressive reality. Positively, when sharing with another, everything expands, breathes, and escapes, flows, and liberates. An emancipatory event takes place by diminishing the burden through the expression of words. Here the words of Lacy (2010) reinforce what is mentioned above; "Likewise, witnessing-as-art could, theoretically, be a controlled method to assure separateness between the artist and the social situation as easily as it could be a reflection of the longing to connect and heal through making" (p. 298). Throughout the realization/ self-awareness and posterior emancipation, we as exhausted women holding suppressed images of ourselves, gather collective strength and admire ourselves about the fact that there was undoubtedly agency since the moment we made certain decisions that changed the path of our lives. When we came here, we decided to work in whatever was possible to survive. These positive actions were probably unacknowledged in the past since there was no time to reflect upon them, but in this study, we had the chance to discuss and understand our difficult and risky choices, taking the time to contemplate our experiences, decisions, and choices. The transformation occurred after hardships in solitude, accompanied by children, and in the middle of difficult life circumstances. This has been the most rewarding educational  84 experience of my life, since I had never imagined that women could attain a positive and transformative result after a series of powerful, strong, adverse events in their lives as single mothers. Freire (2005) states: "the oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality" (p. 37). Following his words, this artmaking s/place was perfect for allowing us to talk and discuss our lives in a critical stance. It contributed enormously to transforming the view of a personal experience into a new painted reality. The Socially Engaged Arts and its Contribution to Consciousness-raising. I came to this research as a result of a lived experience that had more impact on my life than I anticipated. I stumbled upon the concept of "grown-up-ness" (Biesta, 2017), which can be expressed as a mature way of being in the world and developing essential values such as compassion or empathy with others. It is here where this research proposed an encounter with the other, and at the same time, with me. Since my social vocation has always been part of my horizon, at this point of encounter, I realized how my own Latin American culture permeates my whole being and I needed to be in the company of other Latin Americans. Here, the words of Lacy (2010) resonate with me:  In the studio-based model, the artist exists within a Western European tradition of individualism, and artmaking is seen as a liberating act of selfhood. Artists working in the community, on the other hand, attempt to practice in a way that benefits others. (p. 293)  In the same line, the art of arpilleras is defined by the collaboration of individuals, especially women. It is characterized by promoting self-awareness and the healthy construction of bonds of affection among people who share experiences. Women become real-life storytellers during these artmaking encounters. To illustrate, the conversation focuses on meaningful stories  85 that enlighten the lives of people, as a great book that needs to be read. As Marker (2011) would mention that teaching stories that help us make decisions, significant decisions in the future of their communities, is important to help people observe with distance, across time, emotions and space) what makes us repeat the same situations again and again. In such a way, it generates knowledge. It raises awareness on how to sort out these disadvantageous situations and how to avoid the same from happening to other women, children, and, therefore, the community. Our personal stories are hidden in concealed spaces where they have been concealed from others. This investigative experience was not an attempt to be the therapist, but the observer of my reality through the eyes of the other. Levinas' (Chinnery, 2010) pedagogical approach “was clearly framed by his ethics of unconditional responsibility to and for the Other, in this possibility our existence makes sense only in the existence of the subject, another person different than me.” (p. 1704) Considering this position, teaching has utmost importance since the possibility of affecting someone else's life is crucial. Of course, this was part of the objective for me, but at the same time, I was tremendously affected by Señora Carmen. I ended up in this period of positive encounters with essential knowledge, wise teachings, words, and ways of making things.  Teaching and learning are dialogical events where the different roles are exchanged between the participants. You present your knowledge to the participant at times, but at others, you are surprised by the elements your partner/student shows you. It could be in the way she inserts the thread in the needle, the stories she narrates or on how things are made, how she overcame hardships, how she made her way in this new land, or how things have changed for her for the better throughout her life. Knowledge emerges in this dialogical exchange or learning circles (Freire & Macedo, 1995). People, in general, leave the place carrying new information  86 and an experience that has made sense in their inner selves. The aspects vary from emotional to practical. There is always a telling, not the artificial, exhausting chit-chat, but the profound, sealed, kept narrations that transform us. The same would happen to the rags we would utilize as the canvas for our arpilleras. Two major aspects of the socially engaged artmaking of the arpilleras are collaboration and reciprocity. That is to say; a predetermined plan exists when working in a workshop. You can start setting some goals (learning outcomes), the knowledge you desire to transmit/ show/ express and introduce so someone else can get the chance to benefit from the experience. Nevertheless, in this specific artmaking, many factors were unpredictable and unknown, which were part of the richness of the learning/ teaching experience. The participants, students, teacher, and researcher's approach to the artmaking, together with the wise words that emanate through the storytelling, was a reciprocal instance, walking together and accompanying each other, honouring the word pedagogue.  According to Lacy (2010), socially engaged art is  A process of opening oneself to suffering without borders or limits, to non- quantifiable experiences that expand rather than contract awareness. “Engaged artists bear witness so others can share their perceptions or experience of suffering. Their artwork is often constructed with great care for the emotional and pedagogic passages of the audience, motivating them to wake up to the issues. (p. 291)   Then, the socially engaged art indeed expands the barriers of the purely artistic since issues of intersectionality (gender, race, and class) dye the research colours towards the sociopolitical, psychological, geographical, and anthropological aspects. Since these anonymous  87 cleaners are representatives of a big group, it is worth making visible to society. That is to say, the pedagogical aspect of the socially engaged art resides in the external and internal instances of transformation. Since the knowledge generated radiates to different corners of society that live oblivious to the realities of marginalized groups and the internal aspect, there is a turmoil of events, emotions, and thinking processes that occur inside the participant. As an image, we could depict it as a constant movement of giving and receiving or inserting and exerting the needle in an attempt to create a new landscape out of the rags which constitute the origin of the arpilleras. As Lacy mentions about the socially engaged artist: The subjects of their works tend to be important issues mined from the experience of local residents that are not being attended to within the community's day-to-day life. The artwork becomes a platform to highlight a concern, to gather resources, to stimulate community discourse. (2010, p. 295)  About this I can also mention something that was slightly mentioned in Chapter 3. Even though Suzanne Lacy is worth of respect for all her work devoted to illuminate the audience about marginalised and oppressed groups, she has never been part of those groups neither has been inserted in those collectives. Her work has been more managerial, logistic, ethnographic, and not autobiographical or autoethnographical as it is this.  For Dessai (2020) "As a form of radical imagination, art can allow us to develop a new shared understanding of the world that, in concert with political, social, and cultural institutions, can move the barometer of social change toward equity and justice" (p. 21). Even though the change toward equity or justice is not attained yet, we have given the first step toward self-awareness and hope for a better future. Here:  88 Process privileges time and relationships, giving activist artists a way to shape the non-traditional aspects of what they do. Art media in these works seldom exist in and of themselves but are called into service to reveal the relational, social, or political process under consideration. (Lacy, 2010, p. 291)   The coincidence of the fabric we used for cleaning, and the little pieces of discarded clothes that formed arpilleras, were often the media I brought from my birth country. My biography carried information about strong stories embroidered during the dark years of the dictatorship. These arpilleras were the perfect excuse to gather while artmaking and talking, remembering, and exposing our social, economic, geographical, cultural and political aspects that constitute our worlds. The arpilleras, as a socially engaged art practice since the most political origin in 1972 in Chile, (Adams, 2013), (Bryan-Wilson, 2017) have made visible issues that affect women. These issues can be the environment, or the violation of human rights. All this done while breaking the culture of silence mentioned by Freire (2005). Therefore, through this socially engaged art practice, collectively gathering groups of women who embroider and create arpilleras to manifest their concerns and indignation. For this study, the words of Greene are important: At the very least, participatory involvement with the many forms of art can enable us to see more in our experience, to hear more on normally unheard frequencies, to become conscious of what daily routines have obscured, what habit and convention have suppressed. (Greene, 1995, p. 123)   89 They resonate and describe in detail where our personal claustrophobic situations located us. We both realized that we share similar views and opinions about uniparental families and the lack of opportunities that women in similar conditions have in our countries. Throughout all this writing, I have been able to observe myself from outside and understand the oppressive circumstances that brought me here. The long and rocky path has not been in vain, and teachings and learnings have been rewarding.  I have lived mainly as a mother for twenty years. Since age 29, my world stopped, my artmaking was postponed, and my dreams and creative aspirations were held in a dot in time where I didn't know how to move on, continue, step up, down or further. Then, something happened, and I did not know what to do. I was paralyzed.   Figure 23 Finding my Place in Turtle Island (Detail)  90 For both of us, acknowledging past life stories, has been a necessary step to allow transformation to take place. "Art, if it is about anything, is about perception. Artists and Buddhists know that perception itself has the power to transform situations. If things are seen differently, they change. From these shifts in perspective we, too, are changed" (Lacy, 2010, p. 299). for this reason, the accompanied artmaking practice permitted us to change our self-perception and view of the events. The passing of time, years, and actual circumstances allowed us to transform the bitter flavour of sad memories into a rewarding and positive present and future event. Señora Julia, another participant who could not continue with the research due to job responsibilities, told me once: “Since I had Covid, I never thought about the future but the present as we want it.” “That is to live day by day.” “That is to say that the beautiful thing about creating our destiny is to express our present as we want it daily.” These moments of artmaking gather us to write. through the images, colours, textures, sizes, patterns, threads, needles, scissors, and thimbles. The landscapes and patterns chosen. They are embroidered and tied by this thread. As the umbilical cord that connects us to that dreamlike, perfect, magical, ideal moment of total pleasure, warmth, quietness, of doing nothing. just being, feeling and being part of this state that connects us, conforms us, is part of us all. Retaking this thread started before entering the physical realm,  91 inhabiting the aquatic, via lacteal27 of love, surrounded by figures whose blurry sight can peep. Sucking the thumb, learning to move our limbs, feeding our body through the food our carrier/carer/core mother loves and does. The here, there, the present, past and now. Indigenous ancestors collide in our hybridity. The time sense, the circularity of time, turns into a feminine gathering. A spiraling of events, situations, love and care. The spiraling of my realm of sisters.               27 Milky Way as adjective in Spanish  92 Chapter 6: What is Next?  Figure 24 Searching Paths   Art is the dialogue of human beings with the world, art is the exploration and transformation of our desires so that they can become a positive force for how we seek to exist in the world in a grown-up way. And that is where we may find the educational power of the arts. (Biesta, 2017, p. 18) This is my motto, becoming this positive force. That is why I am pursuing graduate studies to make a change in the world and to contribute to society. This job has taken me longer than desired, but I must recognize that it has been difficult to gather the financial and energetic resources to go on. This whole investigative work has led me to the hidden corners within society, my participant and myself. This a/r/tographic trip has opened veils that were dyed by dark memories. So, once you disentangle the skein, you realize they were teaching-learning experiences for both me and the participant. I am writing for the other women there; single mothers struggling to make ends meet, who are also desperate, pondering giving their children away, or who  93 dramatically take the decision to commit suicide, or who work in jobs that do not satisfy them but only allow them to pay bills. I portrayed one of the many realities that present-day western middle or lower-class racialized migrant women live. This work is done with people that work as cleaners, a term that does not satisfy me since I created bonds with my workmates, especially with Señora Carmen, who has become a dear person to me. The message Señora Carmen wants to transmit in her repaired piece of cloth is strong enough to contemplate a whole world inside herself. What a teaching experience it was to work with her! I cannot stop thinking of this. Her impressive strength, her clarity of mind, her resilience to adversity. Always working. Never stopping. Always picturing a better future for herself and her clan. She told me in our last encounter how gratifying it was for her to forget about her pains, tiredness, and depression while we were engaged in this artmaking. Instead, she would be concentrated on a different activity for the sake of just creating with her own hands. That possibility allowed her imagination to fly away and forget actual life circumstances, which, at times, can be hard to accept. That is something I have also been struggling with myself. Life, from time to time, swallows you into a seemingly endless vortex. In the case of this study, my first attempt was that of sharing similar experiences of single parenthood and migration. This gave Señora Carmen some time to herself. For me, I noticed that I was able to forget the sorrows and burdens of the day-to-day. Instead, my mind was fixated on the detail of inserting the needle and creating the exact figure in the space I wished to depict an image. Any artistic activity where your heart, hands and head work simultaneously produces a high level of inner connection. There is an instance of total calmness where you let your thoughts flow while engaged in the activity. I appreciate this opportunity I have given myself to ponder, write and research about collaborative and socially engaged artmaking within this pair of  94 women.  A similar experience to when I used to teach ceramics to adults in the studio, I owned in my home city. There, I had the precious opportunity to learn about the intimate passages of many students whose beautiful stories of womanhood, pain, and happiness jumped out in the middle of the engaged and liberating act of artmaking of an artifact.  In this research, we both suffered in both past and present from economic deprivation. Many were psychologically and physically abused by their partners and, at that time, could not find any escape. In other words, they saw themselves trapped in the enslaving domestic job of being a housewife, an impoverished single mother, or a neoliberal juggler who, out of nothing, finds some source of income. Some of them did not even have a chance to grow apart from their abusive partners, obscuring their future until most of their children had grown up. The fact of writing this thesis despite multiple ongoing interruptions is only the tip of the iceberg in depicting how strenuous the lives of single mothers are. Asking the participants to give me time outside of their many daily duties in their cleaning jobs in order to talk about themselves while also engaging in textile artmaking was challenging and not one hundred percent possible. As a result, some of the participants finally quit. However, Señora Carmen always made herself available to work with me.  It was a unique experience for Señora Carmen. It was one of the few times in her life when she did not spend her time working or caring for others. Therefore, I believe this brief workshop was immensely positive for her mental and emotional well-being. British writer Virginia Woolf (2001) spoke about women, when we had no voice in similar times to present unfair gender relations. She spoke about the imperative need to find a place where we could have the time-space to write, think, draw, and do nothing for just ourselves. Far from our domestic housekeeping, earning a living task. Far from our children, partners, and more. So, it is here that  95 I see this socially engaged and collaborative practice as positive, necessary, and full of potential. Particularly, with migrant women, with single mothers, where collaboration opens invisible doors that allow the creation of affective bonds, increase self-esteem, and promotes understanding among women in the predicament of motherhood, womanhood, rootedness, and what is the meaningful and engaging act of creating art.  Here is where I concluded the imperative need for educators to teach our students and people about concepts and conversations around the critical view of the world, of our state of affairs, about how the world has become into what it is at this moment. We instill in our students the importance of changing how our governments discuss educational policies. That is to say, changing the world for the better, through encouraging self-awareness and self-consciousness in educational practices to promote freedom and emancipation for others. In any artmaking enterprise, there is someone who makes, learns, sees, and teaches, and at the same time, the same person can be the performer and receptor of this teaching event. Sometimes these acts occur intentionally and at other instances, they are naturally, as in the case of cooking, sewing, and building, to name a few. There is a teacher and a student; there is also the one who observes, reflects, or even theorizes about these apparently simple singular acts. On many occasions, all these identities are held by one person, and this is something a/r/tography has proven to the academic world stating that this Aristotelean triadic: know, make, do (Irwin, 2018, p. 139) is the preferred mixture that we artists, teachers, and researchers generally do in our professional lives. Other researchers in the area have mentioned, and I agree here, that all human beings do, as well. That is to say, any person can create, reflect and teach another what they have learned when the ideal circumstances are available.  96 This thesis made visible the life and stories of those who are often invisible people within society. They/we work in silence, performing physical, strenuous jobs in private and public spaces. Their work is unacknowledged, and it is looked down upon in certain societies. Consequently, during my time doing this research, I have become even more aware of the powerful potential of the arts to communicate things in such diverse media. Artistic processes may be used to transmit emotions that trespass this delicate invisible thread, this touch, that thought, or burden. We carry the weight of the stories we read. Yet, I grew through this learning, feeling the weight and strength of the voices of these women and speakers who opened their hearts into their experiences. It was magical and wonderful, delicate, and moving. After some time, Señora Carmen would say.  “For me it is an honour to work with you. I know that it has not been easy for you, since sometimes it is harder only for us women, especially in patriarchal societies like ours.” I picture myself in the image of the phoenix burning down in the fire of desperation, attaining another birthing opportunity throughout the creative transformation in the light of a new possibility. Then, shedding the image of the poor Sudaca28 that came to the First World and pursuing graduate studies as artist, teacher, researcher, and woman who decided to depict a new landscape for herself and others. Someone who discovered other women and other stories throughout her lived experience of trying to survive in this apocalyptic stage of planetary history. Art is my salvation from burning down into the flames of a grim doomsday reality. Art education encompasses more than just the visual and the act of making. It is also about observing the social and internal connections made through creating.  28 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/spanish-english/sudaca  97  Figure 25 Circles  Every day is a new beginning. Every job post is a new scenario for my bereaved life as an immigrant. I set myself in different contexts: cleaner, office assistant, teacher, tutor, dog walker, and saleswoman. Any personality dressed according to the occasion – sneakers for the cleaning, a coat and skirt with one of the many necklaces and earrings I either made or bought from my past Chilean middle-class university professor style. I put myself into changing personalities and styles for the critical moment. This transformative and creative act of staggering is not walking since it is more a limping in any of those different resumes that must be customized according to the job you are applying for. Every cover letter must be written in a different tone, with specific style and needs. Essential changes depend on where you wish to work.  “This is pure capitalist schizophrenia or maybe pure creative adaptability,” I tell myself, trying to hide my stress. I need to figure out how to make ends meet at the end of the month. The following rent, the tuition fees, the dentist for my daughter every once in a while, especially when she asks me: "When are you going to take me to the orthodontist? I need braces!"   98 Now, this is my unstable reality. This is where my dreams are headed. This is my new unstable reality, but at least I have pure, clean air, and feel free to create my day to day. Señora Carmen would tell me, “I admire your example of life. Your personal fight. I realize that life goes on, and there will always be women fighting to survive. In different countries and cultures.”  She would also tell me: "You always think that the other person is the one who helps you, but it is the other way around. You are helping others." This is the sense of reciprocity found in ancestral Indigenous knowledge (Cusicanqui, 2012). So maybe five hundred years of colonization have not been enough to erase this profound truth that runs in our veins, Latina women; even though we have escaped our fatherlands, we cannot escape this legacy, which makes us who we are. It is our identity.  Research based on lived experience can save lives and spread to other areas of knowledge. I believe there is a need to do research in social sciences, the arts, and in education at large because it has the potential to contribute to making a fundamental change in the world. All this by means of observing and giving more chances to people to live a complete and total life in great emancipation from the slavery of social constructions imposed by predatory economic systems which benefit few and damage many. I also believe that more funding should be devoted to women's research making their plights visible. Women are the bridges to life, and life on this planet needs to be repaired. Placing more importance on listening to women's struggles to improve their material, social, mental, and physical health conditions would improve the lives of children and families and, would ultimately influence the many problems society faces today. This opens this research to different areas of knowledge such as sociology, psychology,  99 anthropology, political sciences, and education (pedagogy, andragogy, and early childhood education), among others. Art education allowed me to identify the numerous possibilities of different kinds of studies derived from the conversations that allowed me to write this thesis. The arts, again, are the propeller engine powered by moments of calmness that occur while mindfully sewing, putting parts and pieces together, and embroidering personal landscapes. This experience allowed the playful engagement in the imagination game. I call this; the “joyful mindful connection” with another similar/dissimilar to me.   Figure 26 Textures  Textures. Touching, fingers tips Folding and unfolding el derecho y el reves29 mothering, sewing, knitting, the cloth that will cover my child, and myself.  29 Right and purl  100 The badge that would carry my signature,  my sign to protect the trip. Signifiers and significant moments of our lives The need to speak, to tell stories, to say their words, Seeing similarities differences as a quilting memory to be stamped on our descendants, on the other women We are only one being/woman/parent/migrant writing the tapestry of stars, of cities, of marches, of children, pots, windows, trees and flowers We do live on the ground. Spread as another quilting memory. that mother earth knits by herself. To cover the good/bad moments That are only moments. Growing experiences.  101 This experience was not one hundred percent collaborative since the group I attempted to gather weekly could not make it due to job responsibilities. I appreciate their goodwill and wishes, but they could not be presented as I needed them to be. Even though Señora Carmen was with me during these different encounters, we could not make them together as often as I had hoped. We first made decisions about the materials and landscapes to depict, but the rest was done alone in both our houses, separately. In my personal experience with some of the arpilleras you see in the thesis, I decided to finalize them on my own at the same time, I write and need time to relax and rest from thinking about writing and editing. As the final image of this project, I took the idea of being born again in a transformative act. I bought a new fabric at a local store. I washed it, ironed it, and started to depict this beautiful flower in the process of blooming out of the back of Turtle Island. As part of this ongoing outcome of this collective effort, we have imagined a suitcase that gathers more arpilleras in similar efforts, travelling around the world, eagerly awaiting the new stories embroidered by other migrant single Latin American mothers. It is the suitcase of feminine migration, of stories, of upcycling, of hope, of joy, of gratitude, of the sisterhood, of understanding, reciprocity, collaboration, affection, and hard work. Sewing and embroidering are part of our survival skills. We keep them dearest since, in our cultures, that knowledge was taught by our mothers, and by other women.  My view is so critical about reality, maybe pessimistic for some. Yet, I see it as a great chance to start from zero, with clean canvasses or arpilleras and from discarded experiences and rags, we can create and imagine a better future. Imaginative forces (Greene, 1995) are more important than ever during these times where nuclear war is looming, the devastating consequences of a pandemic and results after natural disasters. This is the creative drive that  102 escapes from the conventional, the conservative, and the traditional world of the established. Here my view runs to the encounter with the luminous light of creation, artifacts, music, poetry, creating with nature with actions, words with sounds.   Suitcases Resting diagonally, vertically, standing, upside down inside closets, spare rooms, floors, shelves Using them as an extra box to store other seasons’ clothes, books, boxes or even a table to support the pile of jeans since your son needed a drawer more than you. Here they are. Announcing their presence of the in-betweenness Reminding us that there they are Auxiliars, assistants, helpers Ready to be filled up with a pair of jeans, a sweater, an underwear, and socks. when you receive an urgent call from far away announcing the sudden death of your dad, or the Alzheimer diagnosis of your little daughter’s father who seems to be disconnected from reality. They are there waiting to be used. Reminding us that if things don’t go the way you expected with finding a decent job, applying for your Residency, having enough money to pay your costly tuition fees There is always the chance.  103 there is always this mundane article of handmade creation in hand. to let you go back in time and space. to the place you long ago decided to leave, divorce, split up. Watch out with the suitcases! They are witnessing your doubtful, precarious, fragmented existence. in the meditative realms of the in-betweenness. (April 2022)30                30 Another poem from the bottom of my heart while engaged in this reconstructing my memories through artmaking sand autoethnographic writing.  104 Epilogue  Figure 27 Finding my Place in Turtle Island Turtle Island is the place   I decided to root myself.  Here is where  different people of many races meet  in an attempt to find better to do better. It is here where Skywoman  also planted her seeds. 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Retrieved from https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0396866                                    114 Appendix  @activistas.flordecalafate @adllallin @agujascombativas @aguja_indomita @almacigasociocultural @apulayaandesmantas @archivodebordadodisidente @arpillerasbuenatela @arpilleraciudadanaresistencia @arpillerasconmemoria @arpilleristas_angachilla @arpilleristasdelohermida @aroilleristascristojoven @arpilleras_de_historias @arpilleras_itinerantes @arte_femininja @autorretazo @bitacoradeluna @bordad_malditas @bordadeiraspelademocracia @bordadoraspichilemu @bordalalivre @bordarlaternura @bordandodignidadymemoria @bordandodignidadcolectiva @bordandomemoria @bordandopelocuidado @bordadorasandinas @bordadorasenelmuseo @bordadora_xochiquetztzalli @bordadoresistencia @bor_dando_todo @bordasinpatron @bordasusojos @borderquiltproject @bordoparanomatar @brigade_textil @cartografiatextil @casatallerbordadoartesanal @castillos_nl_aire @5_hebras @cristinaoviedomejia @circulodebordado @club_de_bordado_feminista  115 @colecivo.ecologico.accion @colectiva_abordandonos @colectivacrochete @colectiva_entretejiendonos @colectiva.milagrosas @colectivo_ayun @colectivomalahebra @colectivomilagrosas @colectiupunt6 @colombiaesbordada @costuraerrantes @costuras.urbanas @costureras_feministasaborteras @costurerodelamemoria @costureroelectronico @craftivists @cristinaoviedomejia @des.hilandome @desbordadas.colectivo @desbordandofeminismos @des_tejiendo @duelomigratorio @el_hilo_que_nos_une @escuelalibretextil @estoy.hartta @fe_sangrante @festivalexperienciastextiles @fibraycontorno @frentetextil @gritaconarte @hebrasdelamemoria @hilachasuelta @hilosenrebeldia @hilosparanoolvidar @hilos.territorios @hierbasmigrantes @juntanzadebordado @labordaderautonomiia @la_hermandad_colectivo @lasnombramosbordando @las_siemprevivas @latomatextil @linharadical @linhasdesampa @linhasdohorizonte @linhasdesantos  116 @losojosdelaguja @madejas_cntr_violencia_sexista @madejanegracolectiva @manoscreadorastaller @mapatextil @mexicanas.bordando @memoriatextil.col @mil_agujas_por_la_dignidad @mostramoslahilacha @movimientos textiles @mujeres.creando @mujereshaciendomemoriasuba @mujerlibrecolima @pancartatextil @pararemendareldolor @pinarpilleras @poniendoeltemasobrelamesa @proyecto.hilosdevida @puntada_subversiva @puntadas.con.hilo.negro @puntadasypomarrosasack_cka_ya @redesfeministas @remiendos.y.remedios @resistencia.textil @somosunbordado @tejedoras_furiosas @tejedorasubersivas @tejedoresderesistencia @tejerencuentros_bordarmemorias @tejer.nos @tejiendo_rebeldias @tejiendootromundo @tejiendocon_elalma @textileras_mssa @thesewingresistanceh @threadproject_ @urdiendo.memorias @urdimbre_linaaybar @urdimbrevioleta @vocestextilestemuco @zurcidorasdelsur @zurcidovisible