It was enough to illustrate the concept and exhibition path of En route to the art collection managers of Intesa San Paolo, and later to those overseeing the heritage of the Gallerie d’Italia, for an immediate association to arise, leading to the selection of a work among the thousands in that collection. The artwork seemed to reveal itself almost spontaneously—first to the collection managers, who proposed it, and then to the Vatican curators, who accepted it on loan and placed it as the concluding reference of the En route narrative.
Alighiero Boetti’s Mappa is a 116 x 179 cm embroidery on fabric, created in 1984, in which the geopolitics of the world is represented through the coloring of national territories with their respective flags. This results in an intricate chromatic tangle set against the placid blue background of the sea, which uniformly surrounds the fragmented continents. The association between national territories and flags provides an unprecedented perspective—one that disregards cultural, economic, or demographic indicators and instead measures the extent of states with unexpected outcomes. Who would guess that Canada and Denmark are among the largest countries in the world? That the vast African continent is so fragmented? That between Russia and China, Asia is essentially complete? As already observed in the work of Kristjana S Williams, artists working with maps and cartography possess the power to offer new readings of familiar data, revealing perspectives that challenge conventional views.
The technique and circumstances of this Mappa, like many others that Boetti created starting in 1971, closely parallel the site-specific installation by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Karishma Swali, realized by the Chanakya School of Craft for the Barberini Hall. Just as this project provides women with access to skills and a craft traditionally practiced only by men, Boetti’s embroidered map was also crafted by female hands in Afghanistan, between Kabul and Peshawar. This was a deliberate choice by the artist, who sought to make the map less static and closed, transforming it into a work that, even in its material composition, vibrates with life—unstable and subject to evolution. This inherent dynamism would continue over the years, as Boetti’s series of embroidered Mappe traced the major turning points of the tumultuous geopolitical changes of the 1970s and 1980s.
His geography recaptures the instability that human history imposes upon it, a theme that each of the creatives featured in this exhibition has interpreted in their own way. Jovanotti embraces it with a celebratory and optimistic approach, ready to seize its positive and transformative potential. Kristjana S Williams highlights its hidden and unexpected possibilities, oscillating between psychoanalysis and fantasy. Maria Grazia Chiuri explores its echoes and analogies across the globe, following the red thread of textile skills and artisanal traditions. Once again, threads, weaves, and stitches return, intertwining in a specific form in Boetti’s Mappa, which ultimately seals this long journey.