Alighiero Boetti is celebrated for his embroidered tapestries - Arazzi, Mappe and Tutto - conceptual collaborations that resulted in mesmerizing works of art that encapsulated many of the ideas he sought to explore in his lifetime, such as authorship, pictorial language, wordplay, dualities and elements of chance achieved through the collaborative process.

Boetti first travelled to Afghanistan in 1971, where he became enamoured with the landscape and culture, and would spend much of the decade working and collaborating there. He commissioned his mosaic-like word grids and geopolitical maps to be embroidered by local Afghan craftswomen, first in Kabul, and following the Soviet invasion of 1979, in Peshawar, Pakistan, where many had taken refuge. Boetti would provide the blueprint for these works while he left the selection of colours and other chance interpretations and additions, such as the inclusion of Farsi text, up to the embroiderers.

Boetti’s arazzi are some of his most widely known works and highlight his love of games and wordplay; consisting of vibrantly coloured letters embroidered in grids on canvases of varying sizes, the letters can be read in a sequence of arrangements to reveal short phrases in Italian, such as Si Dice chi Finge di Ignorare una Situazione che Invece Dovrebbe Affrontare (They say that someone who pretends to ignore a situation should be facing it) (1988). Boetti’s approach to language was both playful and cerebral; with a desire to expose dualities, oppositional forces and hidden meaning in every aspect of his work.