Isabel Plante

Isabel Plante holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). In 2013, she joined the National Council for Research in Science and Technology (CONICET) as a researcher at the Art and Heritage Research Center of the National University of San Martín (CIAP-UNSAM) in Argentina. His current research focuses on the materiality and international circulation, between the 1960s and 1980s, of visual artifacts such as Chilean arpilleras, Cuban posters and kinetic art.

The project

Title: The French circulation of Chilean arpilleras as visual artifacts of resistance: the cases of CIMADE and Karaxú! (1976-1984).

After Augusto Pinochet 1973 coup d’état in Chile, under the protection of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, thousands of arpilleras were handmade with fabric remnants by groups of women who needed to provide for their households, as their husbands were unemployed, imprisoned or disappeared. From 1978 arpillera-making spread in all Santiago shantytowns: approximately 100,000 arpilleras were made during the dictatorship and most of them were sent abroad. These modest-sized textiles depicted episodes of the daily harsh life in the shantytowns in the context of dictatorship. This research proposed to study French circulation of arpilleras, focusing in two significative cases: the CIMADE (Comité intermouvements auprès des évacués), a very active organization in the reception of Chilean exile; and the musical group Karaxú!, which showed and sold arpilleras in its concerts all over Europe. This project was part of a vast on-going research about materiality and international circulation of high visibility visual artifacts made in Latin America. Their path and sense were marked by the tensions between artistic practice and crafty production, between the “First” and “Third world”. 

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Centre de Recherches en Art et Langage (CRAL)

Selective bibliography

• El género de las arpilleras chilenas: comunidades femeninas locales y redes solidarias transnacionales en momentos del auge del movimiento de la liberación de la mujer, dans Deborah Dorotinsky (org.), Arts Populaires au XX siècle: concepts, dialogues artistiques, résistances sociales, Mexique, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Autónoma de México, 2024.
• Les sud-américains de Paris : l’autre dans la revue Robho et l’Atelier Populaire, dans Alain Bonnet et Fanny Drugeon (eds.), Passages à Paris. Artistes étrangers à Paris, de la fin du XIXe siècle à nos jours, Paris, Mare & Martin, 2024, pp. 229-239.
• Buenos Aires en la producción y circulación de las arpilleras de Violeta Parra, dans Silvia Dolinko, Ana María Risco y Sebastián Vidal Valenzuela (eds.), Intercambios trasandinos. Historias del arte entre Argentina y Chile (siglos XIX- XX), Santiago de Chile, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2022, pp.155-184.
• Printing Invention: Art-work, Project or Device, dans Suzanna Gilbert, Pia Gottschaller, Thomas Learner et Andrew Perchuk (eds), Purity Is a Myth. The Materiality of Concrete Art from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute - Getty Conservation Institute, 2021, pp. 181-199.
• Las “tapisseries chiliennes” de Violeta Parra entre lo vernáculo y lo internacional, Artélogie n.13, 2019, École d’Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Numéro spécial sur Violeta Parra.
• Argentinos de París. Arte y viajes culturales durante los años sesenta. Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2013. 420 pp.