Alighiero Boetti Italian, 1940-1994
Mappa, 1979
Embroidery
92 x 130 cm; (36 1/4 x 51 1/8 in.)
Copyright The Artist
Alighiero Boetti’s Mappe are embroidered world maps in which each country is rendered in the colours and symbols of its national flag. Vivid and executed on a large scale, the...
Alighiero Boetti’s Mappe are embroidered world maps in which each country is rendered in the colours and symbols of its national flag. Vivid and executed on a large scale, the Mappe were produced over two decades by Afghan artisans in Kabul and later in Peshawar, Pakistan, charting geopolitical shifts in territorial boundaries and the flux of political regimes. Approximately 160 Mappe exist, varying in size and detail.
The conceptual foundations of the Mappe trace back to several formative influences in Boetti’s life. After her divorce, Boetti’s mother supported herself by organising a workshop where women embroidered bridal trousseaus. This early exposure to collective, decorative labour later informed Boetti’s approach to the Mappe and other works, in which a uniform template was transformed through embroidery into endlessly unique variations. More consequentially, Boetti’s travels to Afghanistan in 1971 introduced him to the region’s deep-rooted embroidery practices. Afghanistan was not only a site of production for Boetti, but the crucible in which his most significant ideas about labour, authorship, language, and philosophy were inspired and tested. This encounter led to a lasting creative partnership in which Boetti conceived the works, while Afghan women – later displaced by the Soviet invasion in 1979 and working in Peshawar, Pakistan – executed them using the intricate bokhara stitch.
Boetti’s Dodici forme (1967–71) was an important precedent to the Mappe. It consists of twelve copper sheets engraved with maps of global conflict zones from the late 1960s. Boetti used cartographic form as a vessel for political, temporal, and conceptual inquiry. Dodici forme and the subsequent Mappe are best understood as embodiments of Boetti’s idea of Mettere al mondo il mondo – “bringing the world into the world.” This phrase captures his aspiration to produce art not as static representation, but as a self-generating, self-defining system. The genesis of the Mappe series came in 1969, when Boetti encountered a blank world map in an Italian school textbook. This schematic reduction of global space prompted Planisfero politico (1969), in which Boetti assigned to each country the colours of its national flag. By stripping the map of its presumed neutrality and re-inscribing it with national symbols, Boetti reframed it as a space of semiotic instability – an interface between signifier and signified, echoing structuralist thought. The Mappe, then, are not mere illustrations of global order but interrogations of it, questioning how we construct, perceive, and legitimise borders.
Boetti’s Mappe do not fix the world in place but allow it to shift. No two versions are identical. Changes in political regimes, flags, or the embroiderers’ own interpretations all introduce variation. The works become documents of both historical time and lived time. As Boetti himself remarked, “Behind the creation of these tapestries that I design, based on the map of the world, lies time.” Time is manifest not only in the official history recorded through changing borders, but also in the accumulated hours, decisions, and rhythms of the artisans’ labour.
The Mappe are vehicles of entropy, a core concept in Boetti’s practice. Although their structure suggests order, the minor deviations introduced by the hand of each embroiderer produce a subtle disorder, proof that energy, not mechanical repetition, drives their creation. This entropic logic resists uniformity and insists on the value of difference and unpredictability. Boetti embedded poetic phrases into the margins of the Mappe, drawn from his own writing or Sufi verse. These inscriptions amplify the lyrical and contemplative tone of the works.
While the Mappe are frequently discussed in political terms, Boetti himself resisted overt didacticism. They engage with politics in the same manner that poetry does. The Mappe operate as both artworks and anthropological artefacts. They document the shifting architecture of the world while simultaneously questioning the systems – linguistic, political, aesthetic, cartographic – that underpin it. Boetti challenges the map as an objective, neutral bearer of information, portraying instead the beautiful order and disorder of human life. In doing so, Boetti gave form to a world constantly remade by human hands and ideas.
The conceptual foundations of the Mappe trace back to several formative influences in Boetti’s life. After her divorce, Boetti’s mother supported herself by organising a workshop where women embroidered bridal trousseaus. This early exposure to collective, decorative labour later informed Boetti’s approach to the Mappe and other works, in which a uniform template was transformed through embroidery into endlessly unique variations. More consequentially, Boetti’s travels to Afghanistan in 1971 introduced him to the region’s deep-rooted embroidery practices. Afghanistan was not only a site of production for Boetti, but the crucible in which his most significant ideas about labour, authorship, language, and philosophy were inspired and tested. This encounter led to a lasting creative partnership in which Boetti conceived the works, while Afghan women – later displaced by the Soviet invasion in 1979 and working in Peshawar, Pakistan – executed them using the intricate bokhara stitch.
Boetti’s Dodici forme (1967–71) was an important precedent to the Mappe. It consists of twelve copper sheets engraved with maps of global conflict zones from the late 1960s. Boetti used cartographic form as a vessel for political, temporal, and conceptual inquiry. Dodici forme and the subsequent Mappe are best understood as embodiments of Boetti’s idea of Mettere al mondo il mondo – “bringing the world into the world.” This phrase captures his aspiration to produce art not as static representation, but as a self-generating, self-defining system. The genesis of the Mappe series came in 1969, when Boetti encountered a blank world map in an Italian school textbook. This schematic reduction of global space prompted Planisfero politico (1969), in which Boetti assigned to each country the colours of its national flag. By stripping the map of its presumed neutrality and re-inscribing it with national symbols, Boetti reframed it as a space of semiotic instability – an interface between signifier and signified, echoing structuralist thought. The Mappe, then, are not mere illustrations of global order but interrogations of it, questioning how we construct, perceive, and legitimise borders.
Boetti’s Mappe do not fix the world in place but allow it to shift. No two versions are identical. Changes in political regimes, flags, or the embroiderers’ own interpretations all introduce variation. The works become documents of both historical time and lived time. As Boetti himself remarked, “Behind the creation of these tapestries that I design, based on the map of the world, lies time.” Time is manifest not only in the official history recorded through changing borders, but also in the accumulated hours, decisions, and rhythms of the artisans’ labour.
The Mappe are vehicles of entropy, a core concept in Boetti’s practice. Although their structure suggests order, the minor deviations introduced by the hand of each embroiderer produce a subtle disorder, proof that energy, not mechanical repetition, drives their creation. This entropic logic resists uniformity and insists on the value of difference and unpredictability. Boetti embedded poetic phrases into the margins of the Mappe, drawn from his own writing or Sufi verse. These inscriptions amplify the lyrical and contemplative tone of the works.
While the Mappe are frequently discussed in political terms, Boetti himself resisted overt didacticism. They engage with politics in the same manner that poetry does. The Mappe operate as both artworks and anthropological artefacts. They document the shifting architecture of the world while simultaneously questioning the systems – linguistic, political, aesthetic, cartographic – that underpin it. Boetti challenges the map as an objective, neutral bearer of information, portraying instead the beautiful order and disorder of human life. In doing so, Boetti gave form to a world constantly remade by human hands and ideas.