Links between bookbinding and restorative justice

Using the art of bookbinding as metaphor for repairing and finding new ways for living together, mother and daughter (Gema Varona and Chón), have created a book out of different pieces crafted in paper and cloth by participants of restorative justice programs in cases of terrorism in the Basque Country.
Gema is a professor in victimology at the Basque Institute of Criminology and María Ascensión Martínez (“Chón”) a bookbinder and historian. In a video, they explain in few words the metaphor of bookbinding in relation to restorative justice while showing the book and its content.

Below, you can watch the live conversation during the REstART festival together with two other artists (Clair Aldington and Marian Liebmann).

María Ascensión Martínez (“Chón”) and Gema Varona, mother and daughter, were born in Madrid (Spain), in 1944 and 1969, respectively. In 1971 the whole family moved to Donostia/San Sebastián in the Basque Country.

Chón holds a Ph.D. in History and is specialised in women’s history, welfare institutions and oral history. She collaborates with the Women and City Forum in Donostia and annually develops the Jane Jacobs walking.

Gema holds a Ph.D. in Law and teaches Victimology and Criminal Policy at the University of the Basque Country. She is the coordinator of the Restorative Justice Theory & Practice Lab at the same University.

Together with her bookbinding group, María Ascensión Martínez has been holding annual exhibitions of her artistic works in this field in the main public library of her city. For her, bookbinding is about “opening the opportunity for a new life” or putting together again delicate elements that were broken. Thus, beautiful metaphors can be established between restorative justice and bookbinding as a way of comparison or analogy to explore the intricate aspects of restoration.

On her side, in the last years, within her work in the Restorative Justice Theory & Practice Lab Gema Varona has been organising different restorative dialogue circles with victims of terrorism and sexual abuse where she uses some of the books and notebooks bound by her mother as frames for expression and reflection on principles of restorative justice by the participants themselves. Occasionally, materials (paper, cloth, threads…) deployed during these restorative conversations have been artistically book bound by her mother, after the restorative project is over, with a pedagogical and memorialisation aim.