Milan dedicates an exhibition to Maria Lai and her relationship with myth.

From October 26, 2021 to February 26, 2022, Milan’s M77 Gallery presents the exhibition Il tempo dell’incalcolabile, dedicated to Maria Lai.

Curated and conceived by Alberto Salvadori, the exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Maria Lai Archive and aims to offer a glimpse of the artist’s work, particularly the mythopoeic aspects of her work.

Il tempo dell’incalcolabile stems from a reading of the works of Salvatore Cambosu, a writer to whom Maria Lai was extremely close, from whom Cuore mio, a short story from which the figure of Maria Pietra is taken, originates. Through the protagonist’s story, the writer, and then the artist, invest the reader and visitor with responsibility and reflection on issues such as respect for the environment and its rules. The power each of us has can be vital or deadly, as Maria Lai specified, thus also meaning the figure of the artist endowed with uncommon tools to read and define reality.

The exhibition opens with the unprecedented presentation of the entire narrative apparatus dedicated to the story. Thirty-three ceramic sculptures from Maria Pietra’s Looms series along with sheets that descend from the ceiling and hang on the walls create an environment around the book in which the story is told. All of this is accompanied by an ambient soundtrack. Legend is Maria Lai’s favorite type of ancient storytelling and carries within it the Latin root Legenda, that is, of things that must or are worthy of being read. Central to Maria Lai’s work is mixing the dimensions of the real and the marvelous.

On the upper floor of the gallery will be exhibited for the first time all the works born from Maria Lai’s interventions on Piero Berengo Gardin’s shots, which depict salient moments of her famous public work Legarsi alla montagna. The action that took place in 1981 that united the people of Ulassai and each of their homes with Mount Gedili remained vivid in the testimony of these images. Also on display is the unpublished ceramic work The Landslide and the original video of the collective action.

The title The Time of the Incalculable refers to a central theme in Maria Lai’s entire oeuvre, namely the connection between the dimension of the sacred, that of origins, identity and birth.

For info: m77gallery.com

Image: Maria Lai. Photo by Pietro Paolo Pinna. Courtesy of the Maria Lai Archive by Siae 2021.

Milan dedicates an exhibition to Maria Lai and her relationship with myth.

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