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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Archivio Alighiero Boetti (no.84/RM/7).
Boetti's Mappe are the living embodiment of the artist's concept of mettere al mondo il mondo (to bring the world into the world). Showing the political division of the world at the precise time it was made - in this case 1983 - the Mappe depict a single cohesive unity that is made up of fragmented and constantly changing political borders. By representing each country with its own flag and shaped by the outline of its political borders, Boetti's Mappe are one of the most persuasive and moving examples of the artist's belief that the world constitutes a constantly changing flux of disordered chaos united by its own intrinsic nature into a greater whole. This belief he called the philosophy of ordine e disordine and sought to demonstrate it at work within the world in all his work from the mid-1970s onwards.
Boetti was particularly pleased with the Mappe because in these the work seemed to determine itself more than usual. 'The embroidered map is for me the ultimate in beauty' he said, because 'I did nothing for that work. I chose nothing, in that the world is made the way it is, I did not draw it; flags are the way they are, I did not draw them; in other words I did absolutely nothing; once the basic idea has emerged, the concept, the rest is not a matter of choice' (Exh. cat., Boetti, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1999, p. 19).
The concept of the Mappe evolved out of an earlier work that was based on the wars in the Middle East where Boetti had noticed the relevance of a country's outline to the time. Noticing that the political borders in this region are especially in a constant state of flux awoke in him the realisation of the possibility of the world map as a means of expressing his deeply Sufi-inspired belief in the ultimate interconnection between order and disorder. 'I had realized that whenever such a form appears on a newspaper title page', he said, 'something important must have happened ... What interested me in these drawings was the fact that they were not spawned by my imagination, but prompted by artillery attacks, air raids and diplomatic negotiations' (Exh. cat., Alighiero Boetti, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt Am Main, 1998 p. 65).
Implicit within the Mappe, therefore, is a harsh critique of such artificial, political, national and ideological man-made borders. In addition, the process by which the Mappe have been made is a deliberate and conscious attempt to encourage the healing of such divisions. Having the Mappe made by Afghan craftswomen, who have little or no interest in the contemporary art world, was also Boetti's way of bridging the long-standing metaphorical East-West divide and of using this creative partnership as a powerful symbol for the potential of such union and healing. In this way Boetti underwrote the essential hope expressed in the Mappe that an increased breakdown of cultural and political barriers will lead to wider understanding and to further collaboration between the disparate parts of the world; ultimately resulting in an end to all artificial borders and divisions. It is quite possibly to this aim, that in this work, the poetic text, split into signs and wrapped around the world describing the work Boetti's 'nuovi desideri' (new desires), refers.
Boetti's Mappe are the living embodiment of the artist's concept of mettere al mondo il mondo (to bring the world into the world). Showing the political division of the world at the precise time it was made - in this case 1983 - the Mappe depict a single cohesive unity that is made up of fragmented and constantly changing political borders. By representing each country with its own flag and shaped by the outline of its political borders, Boetti's Mappe are one of the most persuasive and moving examples of the artist's belief that the world constitutes a constantly changing flux of disordered chaos united by its own intrinsic nature into a greater whole. This belief he called the philosophy of ordine e disordine and sought to demonstrate it at work within the world in all his work from the mid-1970s onwards.
Boetti was particularly pleased with the Mappe because in these the work seemed to determine itself more than usual. 'The embroidered map is for me the ultimate in beauty' he said, because 'I did nothing for that work. I chose nothing, in that the world is made the way it is, I did not draw it; flags are the way they are, I did not draw them; in other words I did absolutely nothing; once the basic idea has emerged, the concept, the rest is not a matter of choice' (Exh. cat., Boetti, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1999, p. 19).
The concept of the Mappe evolved out of an earlier work that was based on the wars in the Middle East where Boetti had noticed the relevance of a country's outline to the time. Noticing that the political borders in this region are especially in a constant state of flux awoke in him the realisation of the possibility of the world map as a means of expressing his deeply Sufi-inspired belief in the ultimate interconnection between order and disorder. 'I had realized that whenever such a form appears on a newspaper title page', he said, 'something important must have happened ... What interested me in these drawings was the fact that they were not spawned by my imagination, but prompted by artillery attacks, air raids and diplomatic negotiations' (Exh. cat., Alighiero Boetti, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt Am Main, 1998 p. 65).
Implicit within the Mappe, therefore, is a harsh critique of such artificial, political, national and ideological man-made borders. In addition, the process by which the Mappe have been made is a deliberate and conscious attempt to encourage the healing of such divisions. Having the Mappe made by Afghan craftswomen, who have little or no interest in the contemporary art world, was also Boetti's way of bridging the long-standing metaphorical East-West divide and of using this creative partnership as a powerful symbol for the potential of such union and healing. In this way Boetti underwrote the essential hope expressed in the Mappe that an increased breakdown of cultural and political barriers will lead to wider understanding and to further collaboration between the disparate parts of the world; ultimately resulting in an end to all artificial borders and divisions. It is quite possibly to this aim, that in this work, the poetic text, split into signs and wrapped around the world describing the work Boetti's 'nuovi desideri' (new desires), refers.