"ITINERARIES TERRITORIES MAPS ENCLOSURES"

Special production for "Megalopoli", 1989

 

The carpet, hand-woven from pure new wool in Kashmir, is made up of eleven small tapestries, hand-embroidered in chain stitch. According to Gianni Pettena, the four subjects, itineraries, territories, maps and enclosures, are the means required for the definition of space inside or outside those “magic circles” that are the walls of a city, the beginning of a construction, as the rituals that are performed inside any enclosure take on a unique quality and role, different from whatever lies beyond this boundary. Thus, the itineraries are routes linking opposing worlds, the real seeking to explore and understand the world of dream and the immaterial. So, the territories to be traversed can be infinite, as are the forms of thought visualized through events and situations. The maps, describing the routes, illustrate the episodes of the territories, the works of architecture, the designed gardens, “the diagrams of geometries that capture the routes of the unconscious” (G.P.). And finally, the enclosures delimit territories dedicated to different purposes, ceremonial, work, living, etc. But the no-man’s-lands, the intermediate zones, also have innumerable echoes.