Maria Lai (Ulassai, September 27, 1919 - Cardedu, April 16, 2013) is without doubt one of the leading figures in the history of contemporary Italian art. Not only on account of the content of her works, but also thanks to the diversity of her artistic approach, ranging as it does across many media - public art, embroidery, weaving, sculpture, drawing, and writing: all are grist for her poetics. The book is published to coincide with the exhibition at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, which is presenting to the general public over one hundred works by the Sardinian artist, from the early 1960s to her very last works, and explores the various themes dear to the artist with the contributions of experts in their fields: the locations, the creation, and publication of art books, her public art events and her relationship with the written word and her own writing. Her entire oeuvre is distinguished by its powerful visual impact, revealing a 'way of doing art' that is nothing other than an instrument of thought. The book's structure reflects the exhibition's own sections, arranged by theme, whose titles are paradigmatic of Lai's oeuvre as a whole: Essere e tessere. Cucire e ricucire; L'arte e il gioco degli adulti. Giocare e raccontare; Disseminare e condividere; Il viaggiatore astrale. Immaginare l'altrove; L'arte ci prende per mano. Incontrare e partecipare. Text in English and Italian.

Today, we believe that the map is a copy of the Earth, without realizing that the opposite is true: in our culture the Earth has assumed the form of a map. In Blinding Polyphemus, Franco Farinelli elucidates the philosophical correlation between cultural evolution and shifting cartographies of modern society, giving readers an interdisciplinary study that attempts to understand and redefine the fundamental structures of cartography, architecture, and the notion of "space." Following the lessons of nineteenth-century critical German geography, this is a manual of geography without any map. To indicate where things are means already responding, in implicit and unreflective ways, to prior questions about their nature. Blinding Polyphemus not only takes account of the present state of the Earth and of human geography, it redefines the principal models we possess for the description of the world: the map, above all, as well as the landscape, subject, place, city, and space.