Maria Lai was an Italian artist who is known for her multimedia artworks that explore the craft traditions and folklore of her native island, Sardinia. Her practice combined weaving, embroidery, writing, and drawing and employed domestic materials like textiles, thread, and books. The Art Informel and Arte Povera movements deeply influenced Lai's artistic developments.
Read MoreMaria Lai's work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and at documenta in Athens and Kassel. The Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI) in Rome hosted a major retrospective of her life work in 2019.
Maria Lai was born in Ulassai, Sardinia. As a young girl, Lai would observe her grandmother mending bed sheets. She told her grandmother the bed sheets had writing on them and would imagine narratives inspired by the way the thread tangled and knotted. Lai also liked to draw and used to make rough sketches using charcoal from the fireplace.
Lai struggled with reading and spelling at school until she met Salvatore Cambosu, a thoughtful teacher and writer who helped Lai to read aloud and follow the rhythm of words.
In 1939, Lai enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, where sculptor Arturo Martini taught her. He encouraged her to explore a visual vocabulary that drew from Italian myths and histories.
By the 1950s, Lai had moved to Rome, where she became influenced by the emergence of Arte Povera and Conceptualism. Lai became interested in gesture as process and began using everyday materials like thread, cloth, and paper to create artwork. She became deeply engaged with literature and poetry and began to study the cultural myths and legends of Sardinia.
Throughout the 1960s, Maria Lai created linear forms with thread and experimented with the craft traditions of Sardinia like weaving. 'Telai' (Looms) (1965–2010) is a series of colourful works made up of twine, fabric, and wood. Each artwork demonstrates Lai's playful weaving process and her ability to transform a traditional practice into something abstract.
Lai's geometric abstractions represent a shift in weaving from a traditionally female gesture that allowed women to express themselves in a patriarchal society to something innovative and immersive. 'Telai' depicts the loom as both a conceptual art object and a platform for narrative, particularly for female narratives in art.
Legarsi Alla Montagna (To tie oneself to the mountain) (1981) is a seminal performance where Lai reinterpreted an ancient legend of Ulassai about a girl who escaped a landslide by leaving her shelter from a storm to chase a blue ribbon in the wind. Lai used the local folktale to bring together all the inhabitants of her hometown by connecting the doors of each house together using around 27 kilometres of blue ribbon over a period of three days.
Many neighbours didn't want to participate due to feelings of hostility between one another. Lai worked with the villagers and proposed a code: where there were feelings of animosity between neighbours, the ribbon would be straight; where feelings were content, the ribbon would be knotted. Some ribbons were hung with bread to represent love and some tied with a bow to represent friendship.
Photographer Piero Berengo Gardin documented the performance. His black-and-white photographs were later coloured by Lai, who painted the ribbons a vivid blue. Legarsi Alla Montagna is an example of performative land art and social sculpture that united a town of people through collaboration and artistic astonishment.
In 2017, Maria Lai's work was exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale in Venice and at documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. In 2018, The Uffizi Gallery held an important exhibition of Lai's work titled The Thread and the Infinite at Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
Lai has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions. Selected solo exhibitions include The Time of the Incalculable, M77 Gallery, Milan (2021); Maria Lai: Holding the Sun by the Hand, MAXXI Musei nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2019); Maria Lai, Museo Stazione dell'Arte, Ulassai (2019); About Maria Lai, M77 Gallery, Milan (2018); The Thread and the Infinite, Uffizi Gallery, Florence (2018); Pagine, Studio Stefania Miscetti, Rome (2018); In the Interim: Maria Lai, Galerie Stadtpark, Krems (2015).
Select group exhibitions include Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy and Materiality, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (2019); Demons in Line: Of Drawings and Other Demons, Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan (2019); Andra Ursuţa, Maria Lai, Carl Andre, Massimo De Carlo Gallery, London (2019); Who's Afraid of Drawing? Works on Paper from the Ramo Collection, The Estorick Collection, London (2019); The Needle, The Haystack, The Thread, Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago (2018).
Lai's work is included in the public collections of Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in Florence, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, and the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Masedu in Sassari.
Phoebe Bradford | Ocula | 2022
