During her residency at the Gardner Museum, Luisa Rabbia became fascinated with photographs in Isabella Stewart Gardner's travel scrapbook that Gardner composed while traveling in China in 1883. Rabbia has used these archival photographs to construct a video of an imaginary landscape animated with her own drawings as well as other images and music. She merged two very personal Journeys, Gardner's and her own. The result is a fantastical narrative that is both contemporary and historical. Explore Luisa Rabbia's creative process through the Travels with Isabella microsite. The microsite requires Flash, opens in a new window, and is best viewed full screen. Download the latest version of Flash Player here.

Luisa Rabbia's work is deeply rooted in drawing, which she sees as a platform that unites rational construct with the imagination. The dynamic tension that exists in drawing between the figure and its background, the being and becoming of space and time, has influenced much of Rabbia's work with paper, papier-maché, porcelain and animation.

Luisa Rabbia was an Artist-in-Residence at the Gardner in 2007. She currently lives and works in New York and Turin, Italy.

Learn more about the artist

Luisa Rabbia and curator Pieranna Cavalchini in conversation

PC: What is your video, Travels with Isabella, about?

LR:Travels with Isabella is a dialogue between two scrapbooks: my collection of drawings and videos, and photographs bought by Isabella Gardner at the end of the 19th century in China. The sound piece is an interpretation of the visual work by Fa Ventilato using a collage of sound inspired by the music at the Gardner Museum. This is a journey through different moments in life, where days follow nights as nights follow days. The feeling of the passing of time runs through the whole video.

What is the origin of the project?

During my residency at the Gardner I had the opportunity to see Isabella's scrapbook. I became instantly fascinated by it. The fact that I have never been to China and know very little about Chinese culture allowed me to see the scrapbook in an almost abstract way. Besides the beauty and mystery of every image, it was exciting to find connections with some objects in her collection downstairs. The little Chinese boxes, for example, reminded me of some of the architectural images in the scrapbook.

What made you gravitate to this particular form?

The immateriality of video seemed to be the most sensitive way to visualize ethereal images based on memory and the past. It gave me the opportunity to bring new life to Isabella's photographs merging them together with other media such as drawings, movies and music.

What parallels do you make between the year of Isabella's travels and the present day?

The images from Isabella's book, especially those with people, have so much life in them, they are records of individuals and buildings that no longer exist as they did then.

There is also her attention to some social aspects, so life in her scrapbook is not seen only through a succession of beautiful landscapes and buildings. There are images of prisoners, farmers, and small figures working against the vast wilderness of the landscape.

Tell me something about your personal scrapbook and what made you decide to combine it with Isabella's?

When I started working I really did not know what I was going to do but I approached the scrapbook with my drawings. I thought it could be the best way to build a dialogue with her, using images instead of words. Images are open to interpretations because of their indefinite nature. So I started to choose the drawings to work with, one by one, frame by frame, and I could see that my drawings were building into a narrative. After a while I realized that I was using a lot of materials I collected over the years and that it was really my own scrapbook. It was a pleasant revelation.

Tell me something about the quality of space in this video and how you constructed specific relationships within the photographs and among them?

I approached Isabella's photographs very spontaneously trying to leave my imagination floating through her images. I did not want to do research into China in 1883, preferring to work with feelings rather than with rationality. So, I went through many digital folders of mine and chose each drawing in relation with the background to see if the connection between the two would create an interesting new dimension and making another personal story. Skies follow each other, seem to join together from image to image, to give a sense of days passing by. It was only later that I noticed that maybe the skies in Isabella's painting collection (like Europa, to mention one) influenced the colors of backgrounds on my video.

How does sound affect video?

Fa Ventilato uses music in his work as a very broad material to explore in all its possibilities: sometimes he even writes things down with music instead of using words. Other times he cuts and pastes and stretches sounds as if he was working with a collage. The sound track is an elaboration of fragments from classical pieces merged with Fa's own created sounds.

Do you search for immortality in your work?

I do not think I do. I am rather searching for mortality.

I struggle to accept that the things we love will be blown away by time. This present that was past already at the same moment I say the word, gives me a deep sense of solitude. Rationally I know it is part of life and there is some beauty about its universality, but emotionally it is simply tough to accept for me.

However, even if its opposite is immortality I do not search for it. There is a mystery in the fading away of things and the ache that accompanies that.

What does it mean for you to show this project at the Gardner Museum?

This is probably the best environment for this work because it is Isabella's house: it seems to be the right place to have a dialogue with her. The work was inspired by my month's residency at the Gardner and I hope the viewer will discover connections for themselves between her collection, her life and my experience and interpretation of the scrapbook.

What is your favorite work in the Museum and why?

There are two little drawings that hold my attention more than others.

One is A Seated Scribe attributed to Gentile Bellini. This very little illustration seems to represent that feeling of presence and absence that is so intriguing for me. The small scale of the work amplifies the private atmosphere in which the scribe is focusing on his writing or drawing. The head of the figure seems to attract all the viewer's attention, so intensely is he is focusing on his own thoughts.

The other drawing is the Pieta of Michelangelo.

I love the construction and symmetry of the image, and the writing that stands up from the Madonna's head. The meaning of it is surely religious but I like the fact that the writing looks as if it is her thought materialized on the drawing.

What is your favorite room?

It is probably the Dutch room. I love the ceiling and I would so much like to see it close up, to discover the images painted on it. It is a very big room, quite sober with its two big tables in the middle and all the portraits on the wall that face the center of the room. Walking around you always feel observed by these faces hanging on the walls!

Introduction to the Exhibition
Saturday, June 28, 2008, 1:30 PM
A conversation with Luisa Rabbia and Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art.

Summer Night
Thursday, July 31, 2008, 7:00 PM /7:30 PM
Gallery talk with writer and critic Mario Diacono
DJ Concert by musician and producer Fa Ventilato.

Animation and Sound: A Two-Part Process
Thursday, September 18, 2008, 7:00 PM
Luisa Rabbia and Fa Ventilato in conversation.

Memory and Invention and Personal Travel Scrapbooks
Thursday, September 25, 2008, 6:30 PM
A conversation with Alan Chong, curator of the collection, and Pieranna Cavalchini followed by the book launch and signing of Travels with Isabella by Luisa Rabbia.