Maria Lai's Books in Vatican for first in-state exhibition dedicated to Sardinian artist

The Vatican Apostolic Library is hosting from May 27 to July 15, 2022 the exhibition The Art of Weaving Freedom. Maria Lai meets the Vatican Library, curated by Giacomo Cardinali, Simona De Crescenzo, Micol Forti, Delio V. Proverbio. This is the first exhibition dedicated to Maria Lai (Ulassai 1919 - Cardedu 2013) in the Vatican. The exhibition project aims to deepen the rich production of the famous Sardinian artist dedicated to books in different materials (bread, paper, ceramics, cloth... ), placing them in dialogue with the vast heritage of the Vatican Apostolic Library.

Of Maria Lai’s articulate and innovative research, a selection is proposed that focuses on the “cruciality that the encounter with the universe of language and writing has held within her artistic research.” This is how curator Micol Forti explains in the catalog, which also quotes a phrase by Maria Lai, central to her artistic production and the conception of the exhibition: “Writing suggested to me a relationship between ink and thread and the possibility of giving body to an abstract fact. Thus machine-stitched, illegible books were born. Bread and thread are in themselves materials loaded with meaning: bread is ’life,’ the thread in the myth of Ariadne helps to get out of the labyrinth (language), it is the thread of speech (communication).”

Among the artist’s works will be on public display a rich and varied body of Books, made of bread, paper, cloth, terracotta, ceramics, sewn, modeled or imprinted, dating from the 1970s onward, two magnificent Looms (1972), the Word Oils (1997 and 1998), inspired by the verses of Federico García Lorca, and the large Sheet (1989), a work steeped in creativity and imagination.

In the center of the Sala Barberini will be the installation Invitation to the Table (2004), a solemn banquet in which the table, covered by a simple linen tablecloth, is set with books and breads made of refractory terracotta.

The exhibition will be open to visitors every Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m., by reservation on the Library’s website https://www.vaticanlibrary.va.

Photo by Giorgio Dettori

Maria Lai's Books in Vatican for first in-state exhibition dedicated to Sardinian artist

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