As a collective entity, the mappe of Alighiero Boetti (1940–1994) encapsulate the essence of an artist whose practice was simultaneously conceptual, collaborative, playful and revealing. Famously stating that he ‘invented nothing’, Boetti used the existing framework of the world map to initiate the creation of around 150 embroidered maps, each reflecting a specific geo-political reality from its moment of production.
Boetti first engaged with the format of the world map in Planisfero Politico (1969), taking a cartographic plan of the world of the type common in Italian schools at the time, and colouring each country according to its national flag. Two years later, he used this same concept of a world map designed with individual flags, to commission his first embroidered mappa from the Royal School of Embroidery in Kabul, Afghanistan. The resulting tapestry revealed the possibilities inherent within such a work, for incorporating multiple artistic agents and the intervention of external factors, and initiated a project of creating embroidered maps that would last until Boetti’s death in 1994.
During this time, Boetti, commissioned maps from groups of female Afghan embroiderers, always operating through an extended chain of production due to the social customs and restrictions of male and female interation in Afghan society at the time. For each map, Boetti made the initial designs, specifying the colours of the countries and certain parts of the borders. The Afghan women in turn shaped the visual outcomes of the mappe through their skilled craftsmanship, fine selection of colours, and unconscious errors – being unfamiliar with the visual codification of world geography into countries, each one designed with its national flag.
The intervention of time and unforeseen elements of chance have also shaped the appearance of the maps – uncontrollable factors that Boetti welcomed and indeed encouraged, in the mappe as in many works across his oeuvre. Indeed, for Boetti, the mappe constituted the pinnacle of his artistic achievements because they seemed to be entirely self-determined, needing only his Duchampian, light-handed guidance to expose deeply complex issues in an extraordinarily simple and beautiful form. ‘To my mind, the work of the embroidered map represents the supreme beauty’ he said, because ‘I made nothing, selected nothing in the sense that the world is made the way it is and I have not drawn it; the flags are those that exist anyway, I did not draw them; all in all, I have made absolutely nothing. Once the basic idea is there, the concept, then everything else is already chosen (Boetti, quoted in Alighiero Boetti: Mettere al mondo il mondo, exh. cat., Frankfurt, 1998, p. 69).
The present work, Mappa (1979), illustrates the impact of political shifts and the passing of time in our contemporary understanding of the maps. The tapestry shows a snapshot of the international framework of the world at this moment – with the red mass of the Soviet Union instantly imbuing the work with a historical significance. Other details also reflect the geopolitical situation when this map was created: in northern Africa, Libya is decorated with the Egyptian flag reflecting the confusion and instability caused by the 1977 Libyan-Egyptian War, and the Republic of South Africa shows the tricolour of the Union Flag that was used until 1994, now considered a controversial symbol of apartheid and colonial rule.
The area showing Afghanistan also reveals a specific and particularly decisive moment in the history of this country in the late 20th-century. Rather than the black, red and green stripes of today’s Afghan flag, this map shows the country filled in red, with the Pashto word khalq (‘masses’ or ‘people’) written in white. This was the name of the faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan who came to power in a coup d’etat in April 1978, and subsequently changed the national flag to a communist red, in line with their political standpoint. This government lasted just over a year and ended with the Soviet invasion of December 1979; the mappe produced during this time reflect this volatile political situation through their inclusion of the red khalq flag.
Over the entire period of production of Boetti’s maps (1971-94), Afghanistan – the country which was the cradle of creation for the mappe – experienced a series of monumental and traumatic changes in government, and successive maps testify to the fluctuating political regime through displaying different national flags in the Afghan territory. The flag of the khalq government represents perhaps one of the lesser-known episodes of Afghan political history, that has been overshadowed by the subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union.
The fine detail and vivid colour choice of individual threads by the Afghan embroiderers is also vividly captured in this Mappa. The bright blue of the oceans gives the clearest indication of the painstaking process of embroidery, with the lines of thread, uneven weave and individual stitches visible across the great swathes of blue thread, representing the water masses.
Although this map depicts the oceans in blue, following the convention for denoting water in maps and atlases, the Afghan embroiderers produced another map for Boetti in the same year that had its oceans entirely rendered in pink. Boetti had specified the colours to be implemented in the land masses, but not the oceans, and thus the women had used a surfeit of pink thread to embroider the oceans, unaware of the significance of their choice, diverging from the expectations of the Western audience that would later view the maps. Boetti, however, was delighted with this unexpected outcome of colour; after 1979, the mappe were created with oceans in pinks, reds, creams, yellows as well as the more conventional blue hues. This therefore is one of the last maps made in blue before the innovation of colour in the oceans.
Around the edge of the map is another compositional element that distinguishes each mappa. The majority of Boetti’s tapestries incorporated decorative borders, with the Italian artist drawing upon the tradition of ornate borders in Afghan embroidery. For each mappa, Boetti prepared an outline for the border around the edge. He designed some sections with specific Italian words or phrases, leaving other parts blank for the Afghani women to fill – in Dari, the Afghan variant of Farsi – according to their own ideas. This particular map features a border that was entirely designed by Boetti, and in his characteristically playful approach to language and textual symbols, the writing in Italian does not follow conventional order, but instead starts in the top left corner and continues in a full clockwise loop.
The inscription reads: ALIGHIERO E BOETTI SAPENDO CHE TRA PARI E DISPARI SOLE E L UNA ROTAZIONE E RIVOLUZIONE NON CE SIMMETRIA AFGHANISTAN (Alighiero and Boetti knowing that between even and odd is only a rotation and revolution there is not symmetry Afghanistan). This text is typical of Boetti’s witty statements concerning knowledge, language and order. It also gives the place of production – Afghanistan. This indication is particularly poignant as just months after this map was created, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would force the women who made these maps and their families to flee their homeland and seek refuge in Peshawar, Pakistan. The invasion also meant that Boetti was unable to visit Afghanistan due to the volatile situation and temporarily lost contact with the embroiderers; it was only in 1982 that he discovered they had fled to neighbouring Pakistan and was able to reconnect with them and resume production of the mappe.
The present Mappa embodies a time and place, the vision of a world at a particular time, made in a particular place. On first appearance, it seems to be a recognisable cartographic schema, but on closer inspection the stories behind this map are revealed. Elements such as intricate details of the flags, the complexity of the weave, and the text in the border contribute to the deeper significance of this map, one of the final to be produced by the Afghan embroiderers in their homeland, in the country so loved by Boetti himself.
