A note on negative heritage:
Expertise in the area of “negative heritage” has taken Julia to Rwanda and Cambodia to lead textile conservation projects at genocide memorial sites. Unlike any other textile protocols, she has developed site-specific, innovative and sensitive protocols for triage, mass treatment, and long-term care and accessibility of extremely degraded materials, deeply infused with emotion and memories.
Victims’ Genocide Clothing and Accessories, Nyamata Genocide Memorial Site, Kigali Rwanda
As the textile conservation expert consultant with the University of Pennsylvania Penn Praxis team, the challenge to preserve as much of the degraded clothing as possible required sorting types of materials by condition and designing and manufacturing a locally made custom clothing ‘tumbler’ and dust extraction system.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Prison Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, site of Khmer Rouge regime torture and execution 1975-79.
This is the first time the clothing at Tuol Sleng has been cataloged or conserved. Working with Tuol Sleng staff, we photographed, built a searchable database, cleaned, tagged, and placed each textile in a pioneering micro-climate storage system.
Each item of clothing tells a victim’s story – some have embroidered initials, labels, or loving repairs.
“I am really humbled by this work and the responsibility to save these important memories. It is the first ever that the clothing and textiles have been examined, inventoried and cared for. Therefore, now they become a visual and accountable part of the archive and record of the story. They will surely provide more info about the atrocities that occurred, but mostly the human stories that are still concealed and hidden, buried literally in mold and dirt. Step by step, the clothing emerges as an important part of the story and reference for survivors and others.” Julia Brennan, on-site at Tuol Sleng, 2018
