A recent spate of exhibitions and an upcoming retrospective have drawn increased attention to the Italian Arte Povera pioneer Alighiero Boetti (or, in his identity-suturing guise, Alighiero e "and"] Boetti) (1940-1994). Perhaps Boetti's best-known works are the textile maps of the world that he commissioned from female weavers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, beginning in 1971. In these maps, every country appears in the color and design of its national...