Raccolto in preghiera, Aldo Mondino, Milan.

I would like to have a room, an empty room.

In a chilly day of winter, I would carefully sweep the floor and make room for a large carpet. I would heap thick layers of grains creating geometric patterns with dark brown and green minute lentils, orange corn and white small grains of rice. It would be a prayer carpet, an homage to Raccolto in preghiera (In prayer), the floor installation created by Aldo Mondino (1938-2005) in 1986.

In 1993, the Italian artist presented this work at the International Art Exhibition held in Venice, Venice Biennale. The carpet measured around 3x5 metres and was made with 50 kilos of grains, such as rice, peas, chickpeas and lentils. The first idea, however, dates back to the eighties, and to the oriental atmospheres absorbed during one of his trips to Morocco. Northern African countries fascinated Mondino. Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, but also Spain, reconciled him with his Jewish origins and offered, to this curious and open-minded artist, endless inspiration and freedom. Imagination and reality mingled creating a unique atmosphere; in his words, it was “like being immersed in a picture.”1 Walking around, his ironic, playful and short-sighted eye captured, often by chance, objects, colours and characters later elaborated in original and impeccable compositions. The series entitled Carpets, for example, was conceived during a walk in the Soko Chico, the small market place in Tangier. Here, a panel of building material confused with a carpet with fringes inspired to Mondino the idea of painting carpets on this wood-cement surface. Experimenting with different materials and techniques was not unusual for this artist, who worked with lamps, candies, sugar and chocolate, but part of his need to find newer and freer languages.

The starting point for Raccolto in preghiera was connected to Tangier too, and to his meeting with the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri. Mondino developed the mosaic of grains sold in the souk in geometric shapes on the floor: rectangles, triangles and long parallel rows that seem to return the stylized shape of a mihrab. The prayer niche, the Door of Paradise that in mosques points towards the Mecca showing the direction of the prayer, transforms the funny design of grains into a prayer carpet. Essential object in the Muslims’ daily rites, it offers a pristine surface for the moment of devotion and guides the worshipper with the symbols and messages hidden in its patterns.  Mondino, however, did not ascribe symbolic meanings to his works. He was more interested in other aspects, such as the suggestions created by the connections between words and objects. In this work, they evoke the prayer, an intense and silent moment, for Mondino, similar to painting. He interpreted this solemn and fleeting instant creating a temporary work that recalls other countries and cultures, but with an amused eye, as none is supposed to kneel and pray on this carpet made of grains.

I would look at my carpet, an ephemeral carpet that another sweep will turn into a pile of grains.

1 Incontro con Aldo Mondino. L’arte come luogo di preghiera e di interazione per un altrove, a cura di Luciano Marucci, Hortus, semestrale di poesia e arte, Arti visive, Stamperia dell’Arancio, Grottammare, 22/1998. Pg. 277.

Further reading:
Incontro con Aldo Mondino. L’arte come luogo di preghiera e di interazione per un altrove, a cura di Luciano Marucci, Hortus, semestrale di poesia e arte, Arti visive, Stamperia dell’Arancio, Grottammare, 22/1998.

Links:
Aldo Mondino Fundation
http://www.aldomondino.it/news

Photos:
Travelinagarden, except for 
Tappeto, 1985, olio su eraclite, 143 × 200 cm from Aldo Mondino Archive 
http://www.aldomondino.it/opere/dettaglio/90