In Pinochet-era Chile, a group of women known as the Arpilleristas denounced the violent regime by creating patchwork images out of scraps. That movement is the inspiration behind a new show, All in the Same Storm: Pandemic Patchwork Stories ( 19 May-30 August) , a collaboration between the De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex and the local Refugee Buddy Project, founded by Rossana Leal.
The patches, she says, express how people felt in lockdown: “fear, loneliness, gratitude to the NHS”. Created by refugees, volunteers and students, the squares have been sewn together to form four large quilts. De La Warr’s Rosie Cooper says: “The way these quilts capture, by hand, the experiences of people we don’t know is intensely human. It’s storytelling at its most intimate.”
