“My textile book, so much left unsaid, shares a painful confession: the lack of communication between a mother and her daughter. It’s my personal story. For years, my mother and I managed it, but she died without us being able to solve it. We tried many times, but we failed. In eleven pages, I summarize years of striving and disagreements. My mother died on October 28, 2022, and since then, creating textile books has been a way to heal and open the conversation to uncomfortable topics for the public who read me. I used my mom’s clothes to create this textile book. Almost 80 percent of the book has fabrics from her favorite suits. Sewing this book, writing it, and finally displaying it has been a painful and liberating process. At the end of the book, I included questions to reflect on the silences we experience daily with people we love. The invitation is to write a letter or have a heart-to-heart dialogue with the person or people we care about.” — artist Gloribel Delgado Esquilín

Translation:
1. my mother and i/ hurt each other
2. we loved each other but didn’t know how to understand each other communication was distorted
3. we were like aliens/ we spoke different languages
4. words boiled in a/ pressure cooker about to explode
-all the time-
arguments/ days without speaking to each other
5. along the way, words got lost/ they fell into a green abyss
6. sometimes, there were letters of forgiveness/ from my mother/ Unintentionally/ she faded away, and we drifted/ away, or was it me who faded away?/ did i fade her away?/ how much pain
7. little by little, the words/ sunk into silence
8. things remained unsaid/ in a hospital bed, it’s hard to talk; it could be too late, or not?/ i tried, but she died./ i couldn’t tell her so many things.
9. i couldn’t explain to her that although we seemed different, we were looking for the same things: justice, peace, creation, and joy./ we tried to find a common space.
10. now, i deal with guilt, regret, and sadness./ i write letters and make books, trying to say what was left unsaid.

Questions in the pocket:
Who do you owe a conversation to? what would you say to them?
Get off your chest what you haven’t said in a long time. what is it?
What do you still have to say? to whom?
Write a letter to a person you have something urgent to say.
do it. There’s no later.

Release your silence.

tanto sin decir / so much left unsaid is embroidered using the free motion technique, machine stitched, and hand stitched.