TEA 1391 (Afghanistan/Mexico), 2012

When Alighiero Boetti went to Afghanistan for the first time in 1971 to start the production of his hand-embroidered Mappe, Mario García Torres had not even been born. Only many years later would he find out about the fascination of the Turinese artist for that faraway land and his adventures there from the owner of a hotel: the legendary One Hotel in Kabul. Boetti’s legacy is thus explored through a major set of works produced over a period of eight years, between 2004 and 2012. These include photographs, videos, sculptures, postal and wall-mounted works which, as always in García Torres’s production, are poised between the truth of documentary research and the irony of artistic fiction. [...]