“The Rest of Time, a project for ‘Arte all’Arte IX’, was inspired by the silence and history of the Ancient Spring of San Gimignano, by the flowing water and the natural landscape that surrounds it. The medieval arches and the sound of water became the page on which I began to draw, searching for a form that could engage in dialogue with the architectural structure while preserving the ancestral harmony of the place. Sitting in front of that secluded basin, I thought about Time, and I tried to give a face to something that has no face.
I imagined an old man with a face cracked like sun-dried earth, his skin carved by wind and water, his gaze filled with the universe and history. Looking at the basin with its flowing water, I saw the tears of Time, as if he had lain there for years, observing the slow passage of things and human folly. Without a mouth and with ears covered, he has only eyes to stare at the relentless flow of life, and large hands to support himself.
The figure is positioned horizontally, wrapped only in rags, with a large sun-moon behind it, like an energy field connecting the head to the feet, the feet to the head. The image that is either being born—or perhaps dying—behind the character symbolizes the cyclical rising and setting of the sun, an eternal return marked by the rhythm of flowing water. The figure’s body is covered with fabrics of different patterns. The rag has previously been used in art history as a mirror/abstraction of the many faces of the world: the geometric pattern of the fabric as a synthesis of the universe.
To represent Time, I chose the clothing of a homeless person—someone who could belong to any culture, place, or era—because he is the body of someone who calls the world his home and faces the absolute struggles of survival. A man who exists within life, but not in the conventional sense in which our society defines values, and who takes the place of religious subjects and ritual scenes that once dominated ceramics in art history.
Although the work was conceived as a temporary installation, it was important for me to relate it to the space as if it could remain there forever, and to imagine how the slow changing of the seasons would deepen the dialogue between the place and the figure. If the work were to be walled in, over time moss and grass would begin to sprout randomly in the gaps between the tiles. Only at that point would my project truly reach its completeness, because that ancient face and that ancient body would become fertile ground—accepted by nature and its universal laws. "
— Luisa Rabbia, “Arte all’Arte IX”, 2004
