Stitching together a network of solidarity – in pictures

In Pinochet-era Chile, a group of women known as the Arpilleras denounced the violent regime by creating patchwork images out of scraps. The movement has inspired a new exhibition, All in the Same Storm: Pandemic Patchwork Stories, a collaboration between the De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex, where it runs from 19 May to 30 August, and the local Refugee Buddy Project, founded by Rossana Leal. The stories depicted, she says, reflect how people were feeling in lockdown: “fear, loneliness, frustration, being grateful to the NHS”. Created by refugees, volunteers and students, the squares have been sewn together to form four large quilts. Rosie Cooper, head of exhibitions at the De La Warr Pavilion, says: “There is something about the way these quilts capture, by hand, the experiences of those we don’t know, that is intensely human. It’s storytelling at its most intimate.”