In 2019, the Center for Victims of Torture opened a new program to support human rights defenders (HRDs) who are living in exile. The CVT team provides training and mentorship in the areas of strategic advocacy, psychosocial resilience and integrated security as the HRDs and their organizations build networks and continue their activism. The program is called IDREAM, and in the years since it began, 69 HRDs have completed the project, joining in four cohorts of ten organizations or individuals who participate together for approximately 14 months.

Lance Height, IDREAM project manager, said that IDREAM actively seeks to foster connection among HRDs in exile, conduct global team building and promote solidarity among participants. His plan was for the project to operate in a hybrid in-person/online manner. “But then the COVID pandemic arrived in early 2020,” he said. “We needed right away to find ways to allow meaningful interactions that went beyond screens.” The IDREAM team looked closely at new, creative methods that would bring participants together while working remotely. They decided to create a quilt.

The project was powerful for participants and the IDREAM team. “This quilt is the physical embodiment of connectedness and networks,” Lance said. The stories and squares from so many global participants make up one unique quilt that provides a narrative of activism and solidarity from around the world.

This quilt is the physical embodiment of connectedness and networks.”

Lance Height, IDREAM project manager

Creating the Quilt

To make it happen, the team collected quilt squares from participants. Cory Matkovich and Emily Beltmann-Swenson, both IDREAM project officers, worked with participants as they considered ways to share their mission, struggles and triumphs using fabric. Emily said that as participants began to create and send in their quilt squares, you could see they “used the inspiration, experiences and emotions that fuel their activist work to make the squares.”

As the team collected squares, they sought out an expert quiltmaker and human rights activist who volunteered to help: Dr. Karen Bovard, an educator and fabric artist who has decades of experience working with human rights activists, artists and students, makes quilts designed to recognize individuals and communities and bring their stories to light. She said, “I believe that art can be a mode of healing trauma, both personal trauma and cultural trauma.”

I believe that art can be a mode of healing trauma, both personal trauma and cultural trauma.”

Dr. Karen Bovard, educator & fabric artist

Karen said it was clear that interest among participants was strong: in response to the request for squares, almost everyone had responded, and she had many quilt squares to work with. The materials all shared a story, a message, an image — something that represented a meaningful aspect of their work. Cory said, “Each square of this quilt tells a unique story of resilience, hope and the fight for justice.”

Messages and Meaning in the Fabric

One square depicts a dove along with the word “resilience.” Karen found the use of this word particularly meaningful because of the IDREAM participants’ work in exile, separated from their homes and communities. As an artist and educator, Karen said she appreciates how resilience can be fostered by participation in the arts, often from a very early age. She said that having the knowledge that you can bring something into being “tends to build resilience because it means later on in life, in whatever circumstances might emerge, that notion that ‘I have the capacity to change this situation’ may persist,” she said.

Karen took care where language appears on some squares, in different languages. For example, she situated English-language words close to the upper left so that people who read left-to-right would see those but used another square at the top right for readers of languages that flow from right-to-left.

She selected a beautiful square that shows the sunrise for the lower right corner, giving it the final word in the wider narrative of the quilt. “To me it’s about the dawning of the new day and the time when hope might prevail,” Karen said.

Some participants said that they didn’t have the skills or resources to create a square, so they described their idea to Karen and she executed it. One of these is a square which represents the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, which were huge, sixth-century carved figures destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The human rights defender who requested this sent Karen detailed research materials and information about the demolished figures, and Karen came up with a plan. The square now shows the absence of these figures, just the shape in the rock where they stood for centuries. Karen used raw silk and cotton fabrics to create the image, using tight stitches on batting, sewing back and forth to create a relief and pattern like the rock that remains, gaping and empty today.

For another square, the activist told Karen she wanted to depict a swallow escaping from behind prison bars, as well as lots of orange and yellow colors. Karen said she was thinking of many different textures for the quilt, and thought of trims she had seen that resembled, on a very small scale, the chain link fence topped with razor wire that surrounds many prisons. Karen said the activist sent a picture and description of a swallow “that is exactly the shape of that bird that I’ve created – which I loved because it is so elongated. The sheer length of it suggests the velocity with which it’s trying to escape.”

Karen spent 10 months on the project, taking great care with the stitching and fabrics. “Quilts are layered, physically – back, batting, front,” she said, as well as psychologically. “Meaning in quilts can be layered as well, because you can see one thing from a distance that is graphic and strong and probably relates to color and graphic design. And then if, as many people are, you’re drawn towards the quilt because it’s made of fabric (and we’re all used to touching fabric and we all want to touch these things), you might see something additional that’s in the quilting.”

Each square of this quilt tells a unique story of resilience, hope and the fight for justice.”

Cory Matkovich, IDREAM project officer

The IDREAM team met virtually with the participants to present the finished quilt and share reflections from the community and Karen. It was a powerful conversation, with people on the call noting the emotion and depth of the stories, the symbols and the images. Cory said that the individual squares provide “a deeper understanding of the diverse struggles and triumphs represented in the IDREAM Project, while stitching us together through shared experiences and storytelling.”

Note: The full IDREAM quilt is not shown for confidentiality and security purposes.