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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archivio Alighiero Boetti, Rome, under number 1955.
Executed in 1989, Mappa is a large and lushly-coloured example of Boetti's celebrated Maps of the World. For over two decades, Boetti charted the gradual changes in the geopolitical layout of the world in a group of luxurious embroideries that were executed, according to Boetti's own designs, by Afghan women initially in Afghanistan and later in Pakistan.
While the inception of this series of works was in the Planisfero politico of 1969, it was in the series of maps that the state of the world's flux, a source of immense and increasing fascination to the artist, was truly captured. Another key strength in the Maps of the World series lies in the successful exploitation of a tension between the contents and the medium of these embroideries. With its bold colours and tactile texture, this is an object that speaks of Oriental splendour and decadence; it hints at a Penelope-like patience in the slow stitching that connects the viewer to the Afghan women employed to create it, heightening another tension, that between the traditionally feminine domesticity of the tapestry workshop and the all-too-often masculine, warlike sphere of geopolitics and history whose ravages and damages the Mappa traces.
Boetti was long interested in the arbitrary manner in which humans divide themselves, assembling between abstracted borders and uniting under abstract flags. By imposing their designs onto the flattened and distorted image of the globe, Boetti highlights the absurdity of this state. This is a means of highlighting the strange ways in which Man has divided and categorised the world into powers and dominions. At the same time, it is a means through which Boetti makes the world appear before us: he both highlights and manipulates the fallibility of these political systems, finally allowing them to produce, as though organically, a pre-ordained vision of the world:
'To my mind, the work of the embroidered map represents the supreme beauty. For these works, I made nothing, selected nothing in the sense that the world is made the way it is and I have not drawn it; the flags are those that exist anyway, I did not draw them; all in all, I have made absolutely nothing. Once the basic idea is there, the concept, then everything else is already chosen' (Alighiero Boetti, cited in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh.cat., Frankfurt, 1998, p. 69).
In this way, he has brought the world into the world, putting into practice his famous slogan, mettere al mondo il mondo.
Boetti made his first trip to Afghanistan in 1971, and later that year visited once more this was the trip upon which he had a marijuana-fuelled vision that led to his coining the phrase mettere al mondo il mondo. In Afghanistan, Boetti found people willing to create his embroideries, but also crucially found ways of life and thought that chimed with the concepts with which he had already been toying. Key amongst these was Sufism, which came to add an entire dimension to the ideas that lay behind works such as Mappa. Much of Sufism is dedicated to the manifestations of the Divine, or order and beauty and of God, in aspects of our world. In this way, systems of writing and of numerology are often considered to contain facets of God. Boetti explored similar territory in many of his works, which investigate or rely upon systems, logics into which aspects of the world can be categorised, allowing Boetti and the viewer to view the ultimate order through apparent disorder the ORDINE and DISORDINE that were such a crucial polarisation in his work. Intriguingly, the ability of the Mappa to reveal deeper orders in the world is undermined by the political content implied by the maps. As well as showing a beautiful and wondrous manifestation of the systems of the world, their distinctly fallible nature, and the wars and struggles that have marked so many of these boundaries and flags, themselves show a state of torment as well as a state of grace rife throughout our planet. Mappa thus manages to balance its roles as a celebration of the divine-- of order-- and as a condemnation of the disordered and bloody ways of mankind.
Boetti had clearly been struck by the implications of his Planisfero politico early on, and decided to transfer the design of one of them onto a canvas support, which he then took to Afghanistan. There, it was converted into a lush embroidery that he had initially intended to be unique. However, on his return, while many found the idea of using other people to execute a work of art scandalous, others showed a clear fascination for the subject. He was asked to create more, and this request made him reconsider the entire notion. Boetti recalled that his epiphany in this matter came during a visit by the Italian arch-gallerist Gian Enzo Sperone:
'He visited me in my studio and said to me: 'Now listen, Alighiero, why not make more than one Mappa? ... Why only one and not ten?' That was the moment I changed my mind: From then on I desired a wealth of them and made the principle of series my own' (Alighiero Boetti, cited in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh.cat., Frankfurt, 1998, pp. 71-73).
This then marked the beginning not only of the Mappa series, but also of the importance of series of works within Boetti's oeuvre. In the case of the Mappa, it is ironically through this process of serialisation that they gain their peculiar power, each one retrospectively validating the ones that came before, leapfrogging back through the decades to the Planisfero politico. For as is clear in Mappa, the world in 1989 is not the world of 1969-70. There are relatively subtle changes in the flags and borders of various nations, perhaps the clearest being in the vast swathe of Africa here occupied by the flaming torch of Zaire's flag as opposed to its predecessor in the nation's previous incarnation as Congo. It is of note that since 1997, that flag and that nation's name have changed again, reverting to a form similar to that shown in 1969-70's Planisfero politico. Another change imminent at the point of the execution of Mappa was in the flags of Germany. For in 1989, as this work was probably being embroidered, the process of reunification was under way. The Berlin Wall-- the most overt manifestation of the invisible Iron Curtain between the forces of East and West-- was being torn down, and soon the black, red and gold, with no Communist emblems, would be the flag of Germany in its entirety. With this would begin the erosion of what remains, on the Mappa of 1989, a vast and monolithic red block of Communist-ruled nations.
The most pertinent of the changes that appear in the various different Mappe was to the flag of Afghanistan. Following the Soviet invasion in 1979, the women whom Boetti had employed to create his embroideries were forced to flee their homeland for Peshawar, making the ever-shifting borders, regimes and allegiances charted so objectively by the Mappe over the years all the more cruelly pertinent. By the time this Mappa was produced in 1989, Afghanistan had known half a dozen changes in its flags and since then has known half a dozen more. Some of these changes have been subtle, but nonetheless reflect the turbulent state of flux in which our world exists. In 1989, the situation in Afghanistan changed once more as the Soviet forces finally withdrew, but as is only too evident from the news today, the country remains fragile. Embedded within the Mappa, the Afghan flag is a poignant indicator of the very real, tragic and often fatal effects that are the true foundations for this multicoloured tapestry of war and domination.
Executed in 1989, Mappa is a large and lushly-coloured example of Boetti's celebrated Maps of the World. For over two decades, Boetti charted the gradual changes in the geopolitical layout of the world in a group of luxurious embroideries that were executed, according to Boetti's own designs, by Afghan women initially in Afghanistan and later in Pakistan.
While the inception of this series of works was in the Planisfero politico of 1969, it was in the series of maps that the state of the world's flux, a source of immense and increasing fascination to the artist, was truly captured. Another key strength in the Maps of the World series lies in the successful exploitation of a tension between the contents and the medium of these embroideries. With its bold colours and tactile texture, this is an object that speaks of Oriental splendour and decadence; it hints at a Penelope-like patience in the slow stitching that connects the viewer to the Afghan women employed to create it, heightening another tension, that between the traditionally feminine domesticity of the tapestry workshop and the all-too-often masculine, warlike sphere of geopolitics and history whose ravages and damages the Mappa traces.
Boetti was long interested in the arbitrary manner in which humans divide themselves, assembling between abstracted borders and uniting under abstract flags. By imposing their designs onto the flattened and distorted image of the globe, Boetti highlights the absurdity of this state. This is a means of highlighting the strange ways in which Man has divided and categorised the world into powers and dominions. At the same time, it is a means through which Boetti makes the world appear before us: he both highlights and manipulates the fallibility of these political systems, finally allowing them to produce, as though organically, a pre-ordained vision of the world:
'To my mind, the work of the embroidered map represents the supreme beauty. For these works, I made nothing, selected nothing in the sense that the world is made the way it is and I have not drawn it; the flags are those that exist anyway, I did not draw them; all in all, I have made absolutely nothing. Once the basic idea is there, the concept, then everything else is already chosen' (Alighiero Boetti, cited in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh.cat., Frankfurt, 1998, p. 69).
In this way, he has brought the world into the world, putting into practice his famous slogan, mettere al mondo il mondo.
Boetti made his first trip to Afghanistan in 1971, and later that year visited once more this was the trip upon which he had a marijuana-fuelled vision that led to his coining the phrase mettere al mondo il mondo. In Afghanistan, Boetti found people willing to create his embroideries, but also crucially found ways of life and thought that chimed with the concepts with which he had already been toying. Key amongst these was Sufism, which came to add an entire dimension to the ideas that lay behind works such as Mappa. Much of Sufism is dedicated to the manifestations of the Divine, or order and beauty and of God, in aspects of our world. In this way, systems of writing and of numerology are often considered to contain facets of God. Boetti explored similar territory in many of his works, which investigate or rely upon systems, logics into which aspects of the world can be categorised, allowing Boetti and the viewer to view the ultimate order through apparent disorder the ORDINE and DISORDINE that were such a crucial polarisation in his work. Intriguingly, the ability of the Mappa to reveal deeper orders in the world is undermined by the political content implied by the maps. As well as showing a beautiful and wondrous manifestation of the systems of the world, their distinctly fallible nature, and the wars and struggles that have marked so many of these boundaries and flags, themselves show a state of torment as well as a state of grace rife throughout our planet. Mappa thus manages to balance its roles as a celebration of the divine-- of order-- and as a condemnation of the disordered and bloody ways of mankind.
Boetti had clearly been struck by the implications of his Planisfero politico early on, and decided to transfer the design of one of them onto a canvas support, which he then took to Afghanistan. There, it was converted into a lush embroidery that he had initially intended to be unique. However, on his return, while many found the idea of using other people to execute a work of art scandalous, others showed a clear fascination for the subject. He was asked to create more, and this request made him reconsider the entire notion. Boetti recalled that his epiphany in this matter came during a visit by the Italian arch-gallerist Gian Enzo Sperone:
'He visited me in my studio and said to me: 'Now listen, Alighiero, why not make more than one Mappa? ... Why only one and not ten?' That was the moment I changed my mind: From then on I desired a wealth of them and made the principle of series my own' (Alighiero Boetti, cited in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh.cat., Frankfurt, 1998, pp. 71-73).
This then marked the beginning not only of the Mappa series, but also of the importance of series of works within Boetti's oeuvre. In the case of the Mappa, it is ironically through this process of serialisation that they gain their peculiar power, each one retrospectively validating the ones that came before, leapfrogging back through the decades to the Planisfero politico. For as is clear in Mappa, the world in 1989 is not the world of 1969-70. There are relatively subtle changes in the flags and borders of various nations, perhaps the clearest being in the vast swathe of Africa here occupied by the flaming torch of Zaire's flag as opposed to its predecessor in the nation's previous incarnation as Congo. It is of note that since 1997, that flag and that nation's name have changed again, reverting to a form similar to that shown in 1969-70's Planisfero politico. Another change imminent at the point of the execution of Mappa was in the flags of Germany. For in 1989, as this work was probably being embroidered, the process of reunification was under way. The Berlin Wall-- the most overt manifestation of the invisible Iron Curtain between the forces of East and West-- was being torn down, and soon the black, red and gold, with no Communist emblems, would be the flag of Germany in its entirety. With this would begin the erosion of what remains, on the Mappa of 1989, a vast and monolithic red block of Communist-ruled nations.
The most pertinent of the changes that appear in the various different Mappe was to the flag of Afghanistan. Following the Soviet invasion in 1979, the women whom Boetti had employed to create his embroideries were forced to flee their homeland for Peshawar, making the ever-shifting borders, regimes and allegiances charted so objectively by the Mappe over the years all the more cruelly pertinent. By the time this Mappa was produced in 1989, Afghanistan had known half a dozen changes in its flags and since then has known half a dozen more. Some of these changes have been subtle, but nonetheless reflect the turbulent state of flux in which our world exists. In 1989, the situation in Afghanistan changed once more as the Soviet forces finally withdrew, but as is only too evident from the news today, the country remains fragile. Embedded within the Mappa, the Afghan flag is a poignant indicator of the very real, tragic and often fatal effects that are the true foundations for this multicoloured tapestry of war and domination.