Maria Lai: Legarsi alla Montagna
“Art serves to unite us. Without it, we are not truly human,” said Maria Lai. These words echo the spirit of her groundbreaking work Legarsi alla Montagna, a collective performance staged in 1981 in Ulassai, her birthplace in Sardinia.
On September 8th of that year, Maria Lai transformed the town into a living artwork, connecting its houses with ribbons that extended to the mountain above, symbolizing unity among people and harmony with nature. The ribbons, far from uniform, reflected the complex web of relationships within the community: knots for friendship, festival bread for familial ties, and unadorned ribbons for enmity.
This unprecedented relational work—the first of its kind in Italy—was deeply rooted in listening. By engaging with the townsfolk and understanding their hidden stories, Maria Lai overcame mistrust to inspire a collective act of creation, turning the entire village into both participants and protagonists of the artwork.
