The Tales’ Spinners: Looking into the story of Maria Lai – Semesterprojekt 2021
Maria Lai was born in the small town Ulassai, in Sardinia. She gradually became an international recognised artist. Her material and tools are linked to women’s traditional crafts: these are both subject and medium of her art, in particular the thread and the loom.
In the little booklet/comic three old women are knitting in the street of Ulassai while chatting about Maria and her art. They are actually the the mythological figure of the Parcae (Moirai in ancient Greek mythology or Norns, in Norse mythology): they controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal and immortal being.
I liked the idea of staging a discussion about this topic: the mythological figures, traditionally representing Past, Present, Future, allow to give voice to different points
of view on the subject.
In this way the narrated story and the narrators become two separate levels: the former have a clear graphic line comic and the latter becomes indefinite and fussy in the back. The thread is not just the topic and tool of the artist, but is also of the three women/Parcae, becoming the connecting element between the two narrative levels and the visual methafora used in the story.
The booklet was printed in Riso in two colours: Fluorecent Pink and Yellow.
The colours were calibrated in order to overlapped and create a completely new “warm coral Pink” for the line drawing while also playing with the two colours gradients.
Texts written by Francesca Barbieri
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