Alighiero Boetti

In his Arazzi, Boetti sought to fuse Eastern and Western thought and ideologies to both expose the unions and divisions that exist across the world. Executed during the late 1970s, the present work is founded upon the principles of ordine e disordine - a concept that the world exists upon a Ying and Yang like division of order and disorder. Presenting a colourful composite of harmonious contrasts, the vivid lettering of each square is starkly contrasted against their backgrounds. The Arrazi series depict texts authored by Boetti and woven by Afghani craftswomen who were given autonomy over the choice of colours. As such, they see a fusion of Eastern and Western energies and expose linguistic convention as a sophisticated yet nonetheless systematic arrangemernt of disparate forms.

In Islam there is a long history of mysticism associated with language, and over time, numerous complex systems have emerged as a means to celebrate and worship God through hormonious, visual caligraphic patterns. Boetti during his youth had been fascinated by one of his ancestors, a Dominican named Giovanni Battista Boetti, who having been active as a missionary in Mossul during the 18th century had converted to Islam and became a Sufi mystic. Much of the spitituality and mysticism is Boetti’s work relates to the ideas and principles of Sufism.

In the present work, the same text apprears embroidered side by side in both Italian and Farsi – the language of Afghanistan – and gives a futher indication of the mixing of languages and traditions between East and West. Actively weaving the East and West together through the intertwined syntax, meaning and colours of the text, Boetti succeds in creating a hormony of arresting visual and symbolic resonance.