We usually think about poets as artists who play with words and therefore with something intangible. Yet the word "poet" comes from the Greek verb "ποιέω" (poieo) meaning "I make", "I create", an etymology that almost reconnects this word with material crafts. The late Maria Lai is among the few artists who perfectly reunites in herself these the roles of poet and artisan. Though interested in the power of the words, in her life she developed a vocabulary made of stitches and a refined geography of threads.
The MAXXI in Rome has currently got an exhibition about her entitled "Maria Lai - Holding the Sun by the Hand" (through 12th January 2020) that celebrates her 100th birth anniversary.

Born in 1919 in Ulassai, Sardinia, Maria Lai studied in Rome and then in Venice, before going back to Cagliari after the war.
Lai's early drawings revolved around portraits of relatives, friends and women at work; then she gradually moved onto landscapes populated with houses, shepherds and flocks.
In 1957 she exhibited at the Obelisk Gallery in Rome, but four years later she decided to stop showcasing her works and refocus on a different type of art.

In the mid-to-late '60s Lai started developing new pieces and created the "Telai" (Looms) - assemblages of wires, scraps of fabric, wood and everyday objects - artworks inspired by the primitive elements of Sardinian culture.

Lai returned to exhibiting from 1971 and kept on creating more pieces between the '80s and the '90s: by then fabrics and threads had become key elements of her practice and she employed them to build bridges between the past and the present, traditions and innovation, history and myth, artisanal and craft elements with conceptual art.
In more recent years Lai became a friend, muse and collaborator of Sardinian fashion designer Antonio Marras. In 1993 the artist moved back to Cardedu in Sardinia where she died six years ago. 
The title of the exhibition at MAXXI, "Holding the Sun by the Hand" comes from Lai's first stitched fairytale: the event shouldn't indeed be considered as a retrospective, but as a tale divided in different chapters.

Curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Luigia Lonardelli, and with the support of the Maria Lai Archive, the exhibition includes around 200 works that showcase her free approach to art and creativity. Among the other works on display there are her stitched books and geographies and a series of works from such as "Terra" (Earth, 1984), "Il viaggiatore astrale" (The star rover, 1989), "Bisbigli" (Whispers, 1996) and "Pagina cucita" (Stitched page, 1978), that were recently acquired by the MAXXI.
The event is a celebration of traditions, poetry, culture, textile art and crafts, divided in five sections with titles inspired by quotes from Maria Lai's works. Each section is accompanied by audio samples from interviews with Maria Lai, edited by Francesco Casu.

The section "Essere è tessere. Cucire e ricucire" (Being is Weaving. Stitching and Mending) looks at the first works made in the '60s after Lai decided to abandon painting and dedicate her work to materials. She developed around this time her "Telai" and "Tele cucite", everyday objects linked with Sardinian crafts. These objects lose their functional purpose and are transformed into works of art thanks to Maria Lai's threads that act as antennae to transmit a reach out to people, transmit a message and communicate emotions.
Threads in Lai's practice symbolise the possibility of exploring a space (a needle pierces a piece of fabric, it passes through it, travelling through it), but she also loved exploring materials as proved by her bread encyclopedia and by her notebooks and books made of fabric and integrating pieces of ceramic and paper.

"L'arte è il gioco degli adulti. Giocare e Raccontare" (Art is a grown-up game. Playing and Telling) reunites Lai's art games, that is recreations of traditional games seen as the elements on which society is founded. According to Lai, playing is indeed a way to get to know ourselves and get in touch with each other, it is an activity that should be explored not just by kids, but also by grown-ups.
Quite a few of her pieces actually show a strong link with childhood: for English poet William Wordsworth the child was the father of the man; for Lai all human beings are the heirs of the man who lost the earthly paradise because he had never been a child, and therefore we must spend our lives trying to play like children as much as we can to conquer back that blessed condition that we lost.

"Oggetto paesaggio. Disseminare e condividere" (Landscape object. Disseminating and sharing) features a wide range of objects, sculptures representing books or single book pages made with everyday materials.

Some of these books evoke in their textures the raw Sardinian landscape, others seem to contain a secret code. Lai embroidered for example on bedsheets unintelligible words that no visitors will ever be able to read: she once stated that when she saw her grandmother mending bedsheets, she imagined she was writing stories to tell to her grandchildren.

These threads symbolise therefore the solemn act of transferring a secret code or a lost language on fabric (women who couldn't read nor write would use the language of embroidery to express their thoughts, feelings and stories), creating in this way a visual symphony and a memory as well. 
"Il viaggiatore astrale. Immaginare l'altrove" (The star rover. Imagining the elsewhere) reunites her geographies, visionary and fantastic astral maps of constellations and imaginary universes.

The last section of the exhibition - "L'arte ci prende per mano. Incontrare e Partecipare" (Art holds us by the hand. Meeting and participating) - has some connections with architecture since it includes her participatory works such as "Legarsi alla montagna" (Tied to the Mountain, 1981), considered as the first example of relational art in Italy.

In 1981 the mayor of Ulassai asked Sardinian artist Maria Lai to create a war memorial to commemorate fallen soldiers. The hope of the mayor was to become part of history, but Lai refused, explaining that to become part of history, you must first make history.

She therefore went on to rediscover a Sardinian fairy tale about a girl saving herself from the collapse of a mountain following a blue ribbon. Lai therefore proceeded to make a living installation that involved all the inhabitants of her native village of Ulassai in Sardinia (and that was no mean feat considering the fact that some inhabitants were diffident, others didn't want to participate because of the ancestral rivalry between some families...).
Lai's "Legarsi alla montagna" consisted in a web of cloth strips that connected the houses leading up to the peak of the mountain overlooking the town.
In this way Lai and the community strengthened the physical bond between human beings and nature, while the knots and bows of the blue ribbons also symbolised the relationships between the families living in the town.

In this project Lai's blue web bound one community, just like everyday we are linked and united by digital means of communication, invisible threads that tie us all. Throughout her career Lai's threads reunited people, cultures and traditions, creating a uniquely poetical and inspiring world and a bridge to modernity.
"Holding the Sun by the Hand" at MAXXI invites visitors to freely walking on the bridges Maria Lai's built, letting themselves be embraced by her soft book pages and by the threads of her sublimely imperfectly stitched world.

Image credits for this post
1.
Tenendo per mano il sole
1984-2004
thread, cloth, velvet
cm 33 x 63
Private collection
Photo credit Francesco Casu
Courtesy Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
2.
Tela del gins
1976
thread, cloth, canvas
cm 66,5 x 60
Private collection
Photo credit Pietro Paolo Pinna
Courtesy Archivio Maria Lai,
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
3.
Untitled
1968
wood, feather, twine, paint
cm 202 x 74 x 21
Private collection
Photo credit Pietro Paolo Pinna
Courtesy Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
4.
Untitled
1991
thread, cloth, paint
cm 17 x 19 x 2,5
M77 Gallery, Milano
Photo credit Lorenzo Palmieri
Courtesy M77 Gallery e Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
5.
La mappa di Colombo, 1983
thread, cloth
cm 122 x 170
Collezione Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte
Photo credit Tiziano Canu
Courtesy Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
6.
Telaio del meriggio, 1967
wood, twine, canvas, paint
cm 100 x 153 x 20
Collezione Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte
Photo credit Tiziano Canu
Courtesy Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
7.
L’albero del miele amaro, 1997
marker, cloth
cm 252 x 190
Collezione Compagnia Teatro Fueddu e Gestu
Photo credit Giampietro Orrù
Courtesy Compagnia Teatro Fueddu e Gestu and Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
8 and 9.
Ciò che non so, 1984 (opened and closed)
thread, cloth, paint
cm 20 x 15
Private collection, Milano
Courtesy Nuova Galleria Morone and Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
10.
Telaio paesaggio degli uccelli, 1967
wood, paint, twine
cm 80 x 65 x 20
Collezione Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte
Photo credit Tiziano Canu
Courtesy Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
11.
Senza titolo, 1991
thread, cloth
cm 18 x 16
Private collection
Photo credit Giorgio Dettori
Courtesy Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
12.
Untitled, 1965
wood, twine, paint
cm 150 x 54 x 5
Private collection
Photo credit Pietro Paolo Pinna
Courtesy Archivio Maria Lai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
13.
Fiabe intrecciate, metal, 2007, La Stazione dell’Arte, Ulassai
Photo Elisabetta Loi, Sergio Melis, Arasolè
Courtesy Fondazione Stazione dell'Arte
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
14.
Il volo del gioco dell’oca, environmental intervention, forex, acrylic paint on concrete, 2003, Ulassai
Photo Tiziano Canu
Courtesy Comune di Ulassai
© Archivio Maria Lai by SIAE 2019
15.
Maria Lai working at La scarpata, UIassai, 1993
Photo Maria Sofia Pisu
16.
Maria Lai
Photo Pietro Paolo Pinna