While researching last week, I came across the work of the Italian artist Maria Lai (1919-2013). Born in Sardinia in 1919, she developed sculpture and performance rooted in textile traditions and the legends and folklore of Sardinian culture. Exploring relationships between writing, myth, fibers, and the land drove her practice. She worked with weaving, embroidery, text, and drawing and is known for sewn books, canvases, and sculptures titled and reminiscent of looms.

The influences of the Art Informel (translation “art without form,” a movement in the mid-20th century in Europe that championed process while Pollock and de Kooning were painting in the US) and the Arte Povera (“poor art” made with unconventional materials rooted in everyday life during the 60s and 70s) movement that followed are visible in her books, loose abstract stitching, and connection to nature. In the 1960s, she began making sewn fables.

*Tenendo per mano il sole* [Holding the sun by the hand], 1984-2004, thread, cloth, velvet, 33 x 63 cm, Courtesy Archivio Maria Lai, © Photo: Francesco Casu, © Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019

In 1980, the mayor of the village Sardinian village Ullassai invited the artist to make a monument. The artist had been living in Rome since the late 50s. Refusing to make a permanent sculpture, Lai returned to create Legarsi alla montagna [Connecting with the mountain] with the inhabitants of the village.

The work was inspired by the myth, the “Cave of the Ancients.” The artist told the tale:

“A little girl is sent to the mountain to bring bread to the shepherds. She arrived on the spot, she hears the rumbling of thunder: a storm is about to break out. The little girl then takes refuge in a large cave and right here she finds all the flocks and shepherds sheltering, waiting for the storm to end. Suddenly, outside the shelter, she sees a blue ribbon fluttering carried by the wind. The shepherds notice it, but they don't give it importance, they consider it a frivolity. But the child, capable of astonishment, does not curb her instinct, runs after the tape, careless in the rain. At that moment the cave collapses and swallows flocks and shepherds inside.”

With fabric bought from a local shopkeeper, they made a long light denim strip of cloth connecting the people and their homes to the land. Around 27 kilometers of fabric linked everyone together. A knot between houses indicated strangers while a bow and decoration of pintau bread revealed that they were family or friends. For two days, a web of blue ribbons covered the town. After tying all of the houses together, two rock climbers went up the mountain and affixed the ribbon to the rock, completing the work.

A photograph by Piero Berengo Gardin to which the artist added ink and thread to depict the cloth as it joined the mountain. Photo via antinomie.it

Children making the playful performance into a game. Photo by Piero Berengo Gardin via antinomie.it

“Indifference is contagious, but so is creativity when you [share] the same emotion.”

— Maria Lai

There are so many things to love about this work! The sense of connection– to place (the town, the mountain), the past through the fable, everyday material culture (the inclusion of the local decorative bread and cloth as a ribbon), drawing on a huge scale with the cloth strips, the playfulness of the event involving the whole community, and the spirit of following one’s delight and intuition. Creativity is contagious, don’t you agree!?

Sources:
https://zirartmag.com/2019/09/08/maria-lai-mountain-ties/
https://antinomie.it/index.php/2021/09/06/il-nastro-la-montagna-maria-lai-pioniera-dellarte-relazionale/
https://www.irenebrination.com/irenebrination_notes_on_a/2019/12/maria-lai-holding-the-sun-maxxi.html

An Italian Artist Who Worked With Thread and Folklore