Adilia De La Llana first arrived in the United States in 1987, but she could never quit her home country completely.
When her husband died in 2020, De La Llana was living in Nicaragua again. Her son, who lived in the U.S., urged her to join him.
โFor three months, I cried and cried,โ De La Llana said in Spanish, her voice breaking. โIโd have to leave my home. Everything I had built over there.โ
On a recent visit to The Womenโs Building, a nonprofit in the Mission, De La Llana showed off an embroidered image of her seven-year-old self and her father in the fields of Nicaragua. The piece is inspired, she said, by her land, and โthe way it feels to long for it.โ
De La Llanaโs work will be exhibited as part of Threading Resistance, an embroidery workshop and exhibition hosted by The Womenโs Building. The exhibition will take place on Friday, Oct. 24 and offer food, wine, and live music by all-femme band, Corazon de Cedro.
Over the course of eight sessions, the 11 workshop participants learned how to create arpilleras, a colorful patchwork panel embroidered atop a burlap sack. It’s a form of folk art that became a subversive tool of resistance for Chilean women in the 1970s, who used them to document the abuses of Pinochetโs dictatorship.
The workshop was created by Valentina Ocampo, an intern at The Womenโs Building, who came up with the project as part of her thesis in Migration Studies at the University of San Francisco.
Ocampo proposed the idea to her colleague Cinthia Carvajal, a Womenโs Building board member, who joined Ocampo as co-creator and co-facilitator.
When De La Llanaโs son encouraged her to participate in Threading Resistance, she was skeptical at first, but soon found comfort in attending the Friday night sessions.
โBeing here with them,โ she motioned to Ocampo and Carvajal, โIโve felt very supported. I feel like theyโre part of my family.โ
Ocampo considers herself a beginner as well. โStarting in May, I embroidered every night to learn how to do it well,โ said Ocampo.
Not only did Ocampo and Carvajal lead each session, they also participated by creating arpilleras of their own. The women hail from Colombia and Bolivia, respectively, and used their experiences to promote collective healing through embroidery.
Carvajalโs arpillera featured images of her past in Bolivia, and present in San Francisco. She drew inspiration from her mother, a survivor of domestic violence who never completed her education.
โIt was destiny that I ended up in a country up north,โ said Carvajal. In one way or another, I closed the cycle and came about creating this workshop with Valentina.โ
Threading Resistance will showcase at the Womenโs Building on Friday, Oct. 24 from 6 to 8 p.m. Attendance is free. Community members are encouraged to RSVP and bring donations of food and drinks to share.
