When it is rolled out on the flour, the image of Sisyphus is left in the unstable, powdered surface, appearing to push the cylinder. Like Sisyphus' unending task, the sculpture must be continually re-created, drawing its image again and again in the flour. Flour must be transformed each day into bread to provide bodily sustenance, just as the creative process continually feeds the artist; it is both a metaphor for life as well as for the making of art. The sculpture Sisyphus is a series of contradictions: it simultaneously evokes the high - art tradition of Italian sculpture and the importance of flour in everyday life -- a classical subject and a contemporary object. It is a work that is both ephemeral and material; a static piece that is realized through action. Sisyphus encompasses a number of media: drawing, etching, sculpture, and even performance. Finally, it combines Arte Povera's fascination with nontraditional materials with the existential dilemma of Sisyphus, connoting the labor, frustration, and constant struggle of the artist.

Sisyphus is one of the more popular works in the Walker's collection. Walker tour guides remark on students' fascination with the work and their delight in discovering the figurative image marked in the flour. During a 1996 project entitled Visitors' Voices, audience members were asked to vote on their favorite recent acquisition. Of the 500 votes received, 120 people selected Fabro's Sisyphus as the work they would most like to see installed in the galleries. Their comments reveal some of the characteristics that make the work popular -- the referencing of a familiar story or narrative; the use of an everyday material (flour); and the way in which the work reveals the process by which it is made.