Alighieri E Boetti : Mappa

A recent spate of exhibitions and an upcoming retrospective have drawn increased attention to the Italian Arte Povera pioneer Alighiero Boetti (or, in his identity-suturing guise, Alighiero e ["and"] Boetti) (1940-1994). Perhaps Boetti's best-known works are the textile maps of the world that he commissioned from female weavers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, beginning in 1971. In these maps, every country appears in the color and design of its national flag, and the borders are inscribed with texts of Boetti's devising along with statements from the local populace about their political aspects of their daily life. "I did nothing for this work," the artist has said, "chose nothing myself, in the sense that the world is shaped as it is, I did not draw it; the flags are what they are, I did not design them. In short I created absolutely nothing." This monograph on Boetti's now-classic cartographic pieces features 40 color images and an essay by Jean-Christophe Ammann.