Alighiero Boetti

Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome
Holly Solomon Inc., New York
Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York
Gian Enzo Sperone Gallery, New York
Franco Vallini Collection, Valenza
Sperone Westwater, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, under number 1005 and is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity

"The most significant pleasure in the world is to invent the world as it is, without inventing anything."

(Alighiero Boetti in Alberto Boatto, Alighiero e Boetti, Ravenna 1984, p. 122)

In 1969, Boetti took a printed world map, colouring and patterning the countries with the hues of their respective flags. Fascinated by alterations in political geography, which he interpreted as a human desire to divide the earth, Boetti's idea was to make a series which would bear witness to every change that affected countries, their borders and their flags.  In doing so he created a work prescient of the more complicated and aesthetically pleasing woven Mappe, of which the present work is a remarkable example.  The whole ensemble provides an extraordinary account of political geography from 1971 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the historic dissolution of the Soviet Union.                                                  

The woven and embroidered Mappe, executed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, illuminate Boetti's perceived separation between conception and execution. For Boetti, the artist was the creative force, generating ideas and conceiving designs, the execution of which he would delegate to others. Rather than indicating technical weakness, in fact, Boetti strongly believed in the plurality of the creative process and always considered suggestions from those who worked with him.  He said of the creative process, "Once the underlying idea, the concept, exists, everything that remains follows and is no longer a matter of choice..." (cited in Alberto Boatto, Alighiero e Boetti, Ravenna 1984, p. 122).

The history of the present Mappa is intriguing. It was, as the curling Farsi text that encircles it recites, one of the few woven in Pakistan, '...by a group of unknown Afghan women who had lived away from their beloved country of Afghanistan as exiles for ten years'.  Boetti cites the head craftsman, Abdul Jalil Afghani, the women, and the calligrapher, Mohammad Yasin Navabi, acknowledging their part in the rug's creation.  Though he conceived the work, the inclusion of Farsi text and its indigenous execution denotes the extent to which Boetti was subsumed by Afghan culture.  His own Italian language was overridden by his adoption of the language and techniques of those with whom he collaborated. 

The rich blue sea, extended Farsi script and vibrant colouring make the present work an exceptional example of Boetti's Mappe.  The bold hues define the shape of the countries, their flags manipulated to fit within their borders, creating a sonorous composition which describes the world we inhabit.  Boetti has reduced the diversity of the world into their flags, the embodiment of political movement and ideas.  Nations are constantly formed and changed as political tides transform borders, and here the viewer is presented with a momentary image of the world amid a period of political flux. The upper right part of the composition is dominated by a vast expanse of red, indicating the flags of the USSR and China which are almost conflated in a band of communist dominion. Boetti's work, executed in 1988, seems almost prophetic of the dissolution of the USSR, a long failed Socialist utopia which would eventually disintegrate into a host of new nations. In reducing individual countries to their flags Boetti denies the diversity implicit within countries' borders and implies a uniform national identity while simultaneously playing with his own by adopting Farsi text and traditional Afghan craftsmanship.

The notion of territoriality and the structure of the map is a theme with which many artists have engaged. Used to explain geography, to delineate territory and to describe one country's relationship with another, maps have been employed for centuries by cartographer and artist alike as propaganda tools and formats for political commentary.  Jasper Johns' Map, depicting colourful American states with undefined borders and stamp-like names, elevates the banal and commonplace to the status of fine art.  In contrast, Claudio Parmiggiani's Globo has been crumpled and suffocated in a glass container, perhaps alluding to the destructive power of man over his environment.  In Boetti's interpretation another element must be considered: every Mappa is part of a chronological sequence. The changes observed from the first maps of the 1960s to the present example derive from man's appetite for war and conflict around the world.

In appearance colourful and child-like, a deeper analysis of the Mappa unveils layers of meaning implicit in the language, composition and structure chosen by the artist. Loaded with references to national identity, contemporary politics and concepts of territory, the Mappa embodies Boetti's fascination with cultural 'otherness', while simultaneously providing the viewer with a snapshot of a changing world seen through the artist's eyes.