“The sons of Adam are limbs of each other / Having been created of one essence,” so reads the Persian text that runs around the perimeter of this Mappa by Alighiero Boetti. Hardly could he have known that the artisans with which he collaborated on this work could have picked so apt a couplet to represent the artist and his oeuvre. A seminal member of the Arte Povera movement, Boetti was fascinated by the duality of the world and the manner in which the physical materials of his process could reflect the intricacies of that world. The couplet quoted is from the Bani Adam and is one of the most famous in classical Persian poetry by the most famous poet, Sa’adi. Just as Sa’adi recognized that multifaceted nature of humankind, so too did Boetti wish to embody a unified oneness, but a wholesomeness that simultaneously acknowledged all of its component parts. Similarly, his Mappa, being an embroidery as it is, physically manifests this central theme of multifaceted oneness that permeates Boetti’s oeuvre. Even in its relation to time, Boetti’s Mappa reflects and embodies an incredible depth and sensitivity – not atemporal but rather operating in and of many “times” at once. Depicting an historical narrative but read in the now, the work is both a contemporary commentary as well as a document of the past. The other half of the surrounding inscription sums it “Alighiero and Boetti, in time, on time, with time and/or the temporal.”