MUDEC in Milan has opened The Moment the Snow Melts, a site-specific installation by Chiharu Shiota (Osaka, 1972) on view from Nov. 19, 2025 to June 28, 2026, a preview of The Sense of Snow exhibition, scheduled to run at the Milan museum from Feb. 12 to June 28, 2026.
The work transforms the museum’s Agora into a rarefied environment composed of a dense fall of threads hanging vertically from the ceiling. Between these threads hover notes and sheets of paper bearing the names of people who have been a part of our lives but whom, for various reasons, we can no longer meet. The public is invited to contribute to the installation by sharing their reflections or drawings, to be deposited in the special box at MUDEC or sent in digital format.
The suspended “snowfall” imagined by Shiota becomes a space of contemplation, a place where one can sense the presence of absence. As the artist explains, “melting snow represents the last moments of something coming to an end; it is the last echo. It evokes the end of a long silence and the retreat of the cold that once held everything in its tight grip.”
Shiota uses the ephemeral nature of snow as a metaphor for human relationships, which are born, change and dissolve over time. The threads symbolize bonds destined to fade, often leaving behind feelings of frustration or sadness. The names noted on the sheets remind us that even when something or someone is lost, it does not fade from memory and that, as time passes, a new spring always returns to bloom.
The Moment the Snow Melts is curated by Sara Rizzo, with the support of 24 ORE Cultura. The initiative is part of the Milan Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympiad.
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| At MUDEC in Milan, Chiharu Shiota's suspended snowfall that tastes like memories |
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