Seven women meet weekly to create and embroider. Directed by Victoria Ripari, each week they discover their ability to create and fill with warmth and colour tapestries that they have now gather in the new art exhibition ‘The Power in your Hands’ because their lives have been transformed by this activity. They are Lola Rodríguez de Mora, Eva Soler, Paloma Díaz, Chelo Betancor, Daría Volodina, Victoria herself and the inspiration for this exhibition, Marybel Sarabia. They use the technique “Punch Needle” with which they manage to capture what it means to them to create, with their hands and lots of wool, but also the importance of nature and colour for a full life.

The seven craftswomen achieve that, in the heart of the Mercado de Colón, there is a unique exhibition that invites visitors to dive into the depths of their particular creative exercise with feminism and the union between women as the common thread of each piece.  For Marybel Sarabia her work ‘Pájaros azules otomíes’ reflects “a thousand thoughts of my memories, my friends, my family, my ideas” because Marybel is Mexican, but has lived in Valencia for several years and it is here where she has discovered that “going to knit two days a week is the best therapy”.

‘The beast inside me’ is the title of the work shown by Chelo Betancor who says that thanks to embroidery “I find the power in my hands with my needle and my wool and so I manage to tame my caged beast”. Eva Soler gave up smoking and focused on her health to “be able to see the flowers in many more springs”, so her work could not but be entitled ‘My First Spring’ because it represents “the beauty of life and my contact with this technique”.

‘Sin Miedo a Volar’ is the work of Lola Rodríguez de Mora with which she shows how “despite your new age, your new circumstances, you have to leave behind the fear and learn to fly again” and adds: “The contact with other butterflies gives you that strength and that illusion that were long dormant inside me”. Paloma Díaz believes that in the same way that children build their sand castles, the women who are part of this group of “Vico Market” are transformed by creating handicrafts. “With the work Castillos de Arena, I wanted to show the joy of experiencing the power that our hands have.”

 “I am a foreigner and embroidery is my way of learning the language, meeting people and being happy in a new country,” explains Maria Volodina who presents her work under the title ‘Warm Embrace’ and adds, “The embroidery classes is a cosy place where they wait for me, where I am welcome, where they give me that warm embrace I need.” The teacher also exhibits. Victoria Ripari shows “The flight of the hummingbird” or how “teaching with colours and emotions my heart is recomposed”. For Ripari, every day with the women she teaches is a way of starting over. “Like the hummingbird in its flight, I achieve in each instant a new longing and a new illusion”.

Report by Will McCarthy

Article copyright ‘24/7 Valencia’

‘THE POWER IN YOUR HANDS’ ART EXHIBITION

April 2025

Las Cervezas Del Mercado – Colón  (Mercado de Colón)

Carrer de Jorge Juan, 19

L’Eixample

46004

Valencia

More info: https://mercadocolon.es/comercio/las-cervezas-del-mercado/