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 interaction 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 (1989-94), 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 southern Africa, Namibia is left white due to the civil war that continued into the 1990s, 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. Mongolia and China also appear to merge into each other, their border obscured by the continuation of the red of their national flags.

Around the edge of the map is another compositional element that distinguishes this 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 partly designed by Boetti, with the left and right sides completed in Dari by the embroiderers.

The Italian text reads across the top, left to right, and then continues along the bottom, right to left: QUELLO CHE NON SUCCEDE IN 100 ANNI SUCCEDE IN UN ATTIMO A COME AL / IGHIERO B COME BOETTI PESHAWAR MILLENOVE 100 NOVANTAQUATTRO (What has not happened in 100 years happens in an instant as Alighiero B as Boetti Peshawar 1994). The playful and riddling content of this inscription, as well as its use of unconventional textual direction, is typical of Boetti’s approach to language, time and the organisation of knowledge. The place of production given here, Peshawar, was the region of Pakistan where the Afghan embroiderers sought refuge after being forced from their homeland following the Soviet invasion of 1979.

Meanwhile, the Dari text – intentionally incomprehensible to Boetti’s Western audience – on the right hand side contains a verse from Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, the Persian poet: ‘Capable is he who is wise / Happiness from wisdom will arise’. The opposite edge is a short phrase that affectionately mentions the artist himself: ‘Alighiero Boetti wears an Afghan garment and paints every continent’. This description of the artist demonstrates the connection between artist and embroiderers, even if Boetti never met the women who so skillfully produced the tapestries according to his designs. The image of the artist embracing Afghan culture, dressed in a piece of traditional clothing, further emphasises Boetti’s deep engagement and enduring relationship with Afghanistan, until his death in 1994, the year that this map was completed.