Il Sole 24 Ore: Maria Lai: Crossing the Ocean with a Thread

By Stefano Salis

A life spent unraveling skeins, unpicking and tying knots, weaves, tangles, labyrinths, and swirls from odd threads, wefts and weaves, ‘weaving’ and ‘being’. And then here she is, Maria Lai, elderly and (humbly) aware of her artistic greatness—about which no one has any doubt now, and which indeed is destined only to grow from now on. The photographer Daniela Zedda has placed in her hands the threads of the ‘cat’s cradle,’ a game familiar to and played by countless generations of children. Despite having worked with threads for decades, Lai has never played it and, what’s more, cannot stop herself from looking meticulously and in amazement at the effect made by the threads wrapped around her hands, wrinkled yet smooth, fingers like spools, tangles that delineate geometric destinies, metaphors of our human condition. Maria Lai (1919–2013) welcomes us with her extraordinary and profoundly intense presence in an iconic photograph positioned just before the entrance to the exhibition: a wise admonition that feels both archaic and forward-looking. Her gaze, her works, are profound meditations upon an unbroken thread which, not by accident, since Greek mythology (the Fates, Ariadne, Penelope) has been a symbol of life, stories, ties, and weavings that become destiny, connection, continuity. Union and communion.

The major exhibition at Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring (an architectural and cultural marvel an hour away from New York, a veritable embassy of twentieth-century Italian art thanks to the incredible work of two generous and invaluable collectors, Giorgio Spanu and Nancy Olnick) is entitled ‘Maria Lai. A Journey to America’ (on view until July 28, 2025). However, it is not merely the artist’s first retrospective in the United States, which in itself would be of great significance. Through over one hundred works and thanks to a particularly compelling layout, the exhibition traces a career straddling the traditions of Lai’s native Sardinia (with early canvases, some never before exhibited, that combine sheep and stones in a stark landscape whose beauty and power she never tired of extolling), an engagement with Arte Povera, and the influence of American culture. More than that, the exhibition serves also as a deeply felt homage and a reweaving of threads that relate to Lai’s personal story, almost a destiny fulfilled after many years. Maria Lai had in fact already been to America: enamored with the poetry of Walt Whitman, and familiar with the paintings of Pollock and Rauschenberg, she visited the United States (and Canada) in the Spring of 1968. She brought with her some of her most significant works, in the hopes of exhibiting them. Seven of these works are now presented for the first time, including ‘Notturno n.2’ (Nocturnal 2) and ‘Pietre’ (Stones) (1968), on loan from a private American collection. Upon returning to Italy, Lai found the courage to present the results of her experimentation in Bolzano and Rome, where in 1971 she exhibited some of her ‘Telai’ (Looms). These are her most iconic creations; together with her sublime sewn books, they define her artistic and moral practice. Inspired by the common tools historically used by Sardinian women to produce everyday objects of great aesthetic value like rugs and textiles for trousseaus, the looms are central, in her inspired vision, to describing the condition of women and their rebellion against the status quo.

The exhibition, curated by Paola Mura (the newly appointed artistic director of Magazzino), is spread across two floors and features works from various institutions (including the Fondazione Maria Lai, the Fondazione di Sardegna, MAN Nuoro, and the Autonomous Region of Sardinia), as well as private lenders and the Olnick-Spanu collection itself. Walking through the galleries of Magazzino, it is worth emphasizing that one perceives a ‘new’—and truly contemporary—take on Lai’s work. It is a sophisticated, uncluttered anthology of remarkable examples from her decades-long career. The final gallery of the show culminates with the poignant ‘tapestry-sheet-book-letter’ from Lai’s last collective action, organized when she was almost ninety, ‘Essere è tessere’ (To Be Is to Weave). Created in 2008 in Aggius, a town famous for its sewing tradition, it consists of textile works accompanied by readings from Whitman. Earlier in the exhibition, one revisits Lai’s phenomenal experiment in relational art (the first of its kind in Italy) from 1981, when she convinced the inhabitants of her home town, Ulassai, to take part in ‘Legarsi alla montagna’ (Tying Oneself to the Mountain). This project joined together people and houses, ‘anchoring’ them to an archaic stone, the majestic cliff of Monte Gedili, with 26 kilometers of blue denim tape. Mapping their connections with their neighbors, all the families bore witness to the bonds uniting them, and how slight but vital their relationships were, for better or worse: a loaf of bread or a bow between one house and another indicated kinship and harmony, knots signaled friendships, while the absence of a sign denoted relationships marked by resentment. The project’s documentation in the show features the video of Tonino Casula and the photographs of Pietro Berengo Gardin with artistic interventions by Lai, previously presented at the Venice Biennale and at Documenta.

Maria Pietra, Lai’s poetic and fictional alter ego, recurs as a thematic figure in the delicate threads that weave through the pages of her artwork-books, displayed in breathtaking glass cases that highlight the essence of these works. From her return to Sardinia in the 1990s, she emerges as a figure of artist-woman constantly engaged in research: mixed media works, large sewn sheets, books, and looms. In the threads of ‘Vela spaziale’ (Spatial Sail), one finds a life reaching out towards new experiences, conquests, and memories. In Maria Lai’s art, everything is a weave of memories, transformations, and a yearning for the unknown. These are universal stories, told with gentle stubbornness by a sort of petite ‘jana’ (a mythical Sardinian figure), a great artist and a powerful fairy despite her soft, calm voice. Emotions and reflections touch the heart and mind of every observer, regardless of their historical or geographical context. They create a knot that wraps itself in your chest and stays with you. It is the same knot that Maria Lai experienced as she observed with rapture the threads in the photo by Daniela Zedda to which the viewer returns at the end of the exhibition. Those soft, taut threads, waiting for someone else—any one of us—to pick them up again from her wise fingers, in the miracle that art renews, enabling us to hold hands with the sun, with words, and with other stars.