Maria Lai
Maria Lai between sacred and domestic everyday life
The exhibition which retraces the work of Maria Lai in an unprecedented way is the first, in 2021, that Antichi Poderi Jerzu dedicates to the great artist, inaugurating the space destined to become permanent. Mend the pain. Weaving hope, curated by Micol Forti, director of the Contemporary Art Collection of the Vatican Museums, investigates the artistic career of Maria Lai starting from her rewriting of sacred history with subjects expressly linked to religious tradition and reaching up to the drawings made in her youth ages in which the artist, through essential and decisive features, portrays local culture and domestic everyday life.
Art that investigates the mystery of life
Strongly linked to her land of origin, Maria Lai observes and represents reality in all its forms, focusing in particular on figures of women at work while they sift, knead bread, wash clothes, sit at the loom or look after children, together with less frequent figures of men, shepherds, fishermen, farmers and hunters. Lai brings the fragility and potential of life into her works, demonstrating that art has among its highest tasks revealing the meaning of existence, revealing the mysteries of being born and dying, becoming the horizon of our wanderings.
