.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Executed over a period of nine years, this ennead of Arazzi – the series of brightly coloured, hand-woven square tapestries Boetti created in in conjunction with traditional Afghani embroiderers, first in Kabul and then, following the outbreak of war in the region, with refugees living in Peshawar, Pakistan – present a perfect window onto several of the key concepts which underpinned his entire artistic practice. In these vibrant, imposing works, the artist conceals a series of sayings, truisms and aphorisms in a seemingly disordered field of coloured squares and individual letters to create an intricate cryptographic game for his viewers to solve.
Each geometric square is divided into a strict grid of colour-filled sub-squares, containing a single upper-case letter. At first glance, these letters appear as a chaotic jumble of independent shapes, appreciated not for their linguistic meaning, but rather purely as autonomous geometric forms. However, the seemingly random distribution of characters is in fact perfectly regulated, legible only to those who have decoded the artist’s secret formula. When read in vertical columns from left to right, these letters spell out the individual titles of each work. The deliberate ambiguity of some of the phrases – ‘I don’t leave I don’t stay,’ ‘Sometimes sun sometimes moon’ – adds another level of mystery to the text, so that even if the viewer can unravel the artist’s complex cipher, the meaning behind each work remains elusive.
Within this collection, one arazzo stands out for its apparent divergence from the rules of Boetti’s familiar system - Tra il cielo e la terra. In this intriguing tapestry, the square is divided into thirty-six individual panels, overlaid with letters that travel in two different directions. Reading the columns from left to right, the phrase ‘Tra la terra e il cielo’ (Between the earth and the sky) emerges from the same system as the rest of the arazzi. However, to comprehend the rest of the square it must then be turned 180 degrees as the rest of the letters appear upside-down. When inverted, the phrase ‘Tra il cielo e la terra,’ a playful rearrangement of its companion phrase, reveals itself. Through this complex doubling, Boetti subverts our expectations, disrupting our reading of his system and opening the arazzi to new expressive possibilities.
Each geometric square is divided into a strict grid of colour-filled sub-squares, containing a single upper-case letter. At first glance, these letters appear as a chaotic jumble of independent shapes, appreciated not for their linguistic meaning, but rather purely as autonomous geometric forms. However, the seemingly random distribution of characters is in fact perfectly regulated, legible only to those who have decoded the artist’s secret formula. When read in vertical columns from left to right, these letters spell out the individual titles of each work. The deliberate ambiguity of some of the phrases – ‘I don’t leave I don’t stay,’ ‘Sometimes sun sometimes moon’ – adds another level of mystery to the text, so that even if the viewer can unravel the artist’s complex cipher, the meaning behind each work remains elusive.
Within this collection, one arazzo stands out for its apparent divergence from the rules of Boetti’s familiar system - Tra il cielo e la terra. In this intriguing tapestry, the square is divided into thirty-six individual panels, overlaid with letters that travel in two different directions. Reading the columns from left to right, the phrase ‘Tra la terra e il cielo’ (Between the earth and the sky) emerges from the same system as the rest of the arazzi. However, to comprehend the rest of the square it must then be turned 180 degrees as the rest of the letters appear upside-down. When inverted, the phrase ‘Tra il cielo e la terra,’ a playful rearrangement of its companion phrase, reveals itself. Through this complex doubling, Boetti subverts our expectations, disrupting our reading of his system and opening the arazzi to new expressive possibilities.