TIME TO START is a big performative event that takes place in the city of Varese for the fourth year in a row and sees the participation of Italian and international artists. The event is promoted by the WgArt Association with the support of the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Varese.

The theme for the fourth edition is the contemporary reinterpretation of the work "Tamar of Giuda" by Francesco Hayez, one of the greatest representatives of 19th-century Italian painting. The work is perhaps the most important painting, both from a historical and pictorial point of view, preserved in the Civic Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Castello di Masnago in Varese.
The painting was donated to the Municipality of Varese by Massimo Vita in 1971 and is to be considered one of the greatest masterpieces of the Venetian painter's early artistic maturity. The painting represents Tamar, the biblical character who, in the book of Genesis, married the first two sons of Judah: Onan and Er, who, for various reasons, fell into disgrace in the eyes of the Lord, who made them die. Judas blamed Tamar and did not want her to marry his third son, Sela, as the Jewish tradition wanted. Tamar then devised a stratagem: she disguised herself as a prostitute and, without being recognized (she had veiled her face), seduced Judas, who, to join her, promised her a kid from his flock and left her his seal, cord, and stick. When Judas was informed that his daughter-in-law had prostituted herself and had become pregnant, he condemned her to the stake. The woman then sent her father-in-law the objects she had left her and sent word to him that the man with whom she had prostituted herself was the owner of those things. Judas recognized the seal and other objects and recognized his sin, namely, that he had not given Tamar his third son in marriage. Hayez therefore preferred not to paint the whole story, which he referenced only through symbols such as the stick and the ring that Tamar holds in her left hand, instead, he focuses on the charm of the isolated figure, whose melancholic beauty seems to want to hide under the large cloak.

Wg Art invited 10 artists: Francisco Bosoletti, David De La Mano, Kraser, La Fille Bertha, Camilo Nuñez, Marco Oggian, Pax Paloscia, Refreshink, SeaCreative, and Ufocinque; who will create a new work reinterpreting the myth and the painting of Hayez in a modern key. The artworks will be exhibited in the halls of the Civic Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Castello di Masnago.
For this edition, Wg Art has chosen not to exhibit the works around the city, as in previous years, but to present them solely in the museum spaces of the Castello, in order to create a close relationship with the original work. The inauguration will be on Saturday, October 7, from 17 to 21, and the exhibition will be open until October 29.