Kirkwood’s Milagro del Dia Exhibit Shares Personal Stories of Rural Mexican Women
The images express profound truths in a simple way, giving thanks for beneficial blessings of rain, health, healing or good fortune. The delicate stitching sometimes stands alone in a frame, sometimes gathered in groups on cloth quilt backings, telling stories of a village, family or events of a year.
Milagro del Dia: The Daily Miracle is the current exhibit on display now through November 6 at Kirkwood Community College. The collection in Kirkwood’s Iowa Hall Gallery contains embroidered quilts, individual cloth works and photographs that reflect daily lives of Mexican women through their hand-made expressions. The exhibit was assembled by Susan Chrysler White of the University of Iowa. White and others supported the local Mexican women in providing materials, then gathering the finished work and helping them sell the quilts in local markets.
Milagro del Dia is a collection of stories by individual women presented in the form of ex votos, or “from a prayer” symbolism. The individual fabric pictures, many with words in Spanish explaining the image, have been created by women in rural villages in the Guanajuato region of central Mexico (about four hours’ drive north of Mexico City.) After sewing their personal fabric testimonies, they are gathered into quilts that capture the many stories and views of daily life in rural Mexico. The campesinas, or “women of the country” are from indigenous populations of mainly Chichemeca communities who were never conquered by the Spanish military and colonizers.
Economic conditions of the past decades have driven many men from this area of Mexico to find work elsewhere, leaving the women and elderly with fewer economic options. Susan White has visited the area extensively, as her parents lived in Guanajuato following retirement. White and others worked with the women of the villages and helped them find expression—and income opportunity—through their embroidered creations. White and others brought fabric and thread to the women, then gathered the completed works and paid them for the finished pieces.
“As the project has matured, the quality of the work has steadily improved and the women have taken more and more responsibility for its management. We are nearing a point when it will be entirely their own,” White said.
Quilts from the Milagro del Dia project have been displayed in galleries from New York City and Los Angeles to Taos, New Mexico and Toronto, Ontario.
An artist’s reception for the exhibit will be held Thursday, Nov. 5 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Visitors may also take in a Mexican themed dinner in conjunction with the exhibit, presented by Kirkwood Culinary Arts students. The dinner is set for the Class Act Restaurant Nov. 5 at 6 p.m. Dinner reservations may be made at (319) 398-5468.