(Paris). In the Ulassai wind farm in Sardinia there is a work by him. He was a lover of nature and traditions. She is an artist anticipating trends such as “relational art”. I have seen her works at the Moma in New York and at the Pompidu Center in Paris. And it is in the French capital full of tourists for the Christmas holidays that the exhibition “Maria Lai. Suivez le rythme”. An extraordinary event organized by the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris on the occasion of the centenary of the artist's birth Sardinian who died in 2013. After the important exhibitions organized by the Uffizi in Florence in 2018 and by the more recent and rich MAXXI in Rome this year and the participation in the 57th Venice Biennale, the exhibition is the first in Paris. An important event to discover an artist who in her career has tried to bring art closer to people.
Maria Lai lived Sardinia through various eras. But she has always remained tied to her land to that rough but human environment. It is no coincidence that she said that her work more important than her is "Legarsi alla montagna". While "The capture of the wind wing", inspired by the territory, is the one located at the Ulassai wind farm, Maria's birthplace. Those exhibited in Paris these days represent a complex artistic excursus related to the places of life she lived, both Italian and foreign. The Fondazione Stazione dell'Arte, the Fondazione di Sardegna, the Municipality of Ulassai and the Maria Lai Archive have collaborated with the French Cultural Institute on the exhibition. the very intention of giving back to the public an overall view of Lai's artistic career.
At a young age he had an obstacle to learning. It was only the first of an intense and articulated artistic and biographical journey, he explains David Mariani, curator of the exhibition and Director of the Ulassai Art Station Museum. But it will be precisely that lesson that will convince Maria that involvement and dialogue with the viewer were the basis of the creation of a work, as evidenced by her masterpiece "Legarsi alla montagna", as we said. In this way the "art relational".
Sewn books, geographies, fairy tales, games, photographic documentation of some of his most significant environmental interventions are exhibited in Paris: the ceiling-frame from 1982, the sewn goats from 1992, the flight of the goose from 2003. The exhibition is like a journey inside Lai's imagination. Full of ideas and curiosities. It is an " invitation to abandon yourself to the adventure of emotions, to the pleasure of discovering an artist who had to fight against prejudices that have accompanied and in part still accompany the female presence in the art world" he adds Fabio Gambaro Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.
Free admission to the is at the Cultural Institute at no. 50 Rue de Varenne, Monday-Friday 10:00-13:00/ 15:00-18:00.
