The moment the snow melts

The Moment the Snow Melts is the site-specific installation that Chiharu Shiota (Osaka, 1972) presents at MUDEC as a prelude to the exhibition The Sense of Snow (February 2026). The artist transforms the museum’s agorà into a suspended landscape: an interweaving of white threads descending from the ceiling like a motionless snowfall. Among the threads float tickets and sheets of paper bearing names and thoughts dedicated to people who have passed through our lives but whom we can no longer meet.

Since September, visitors have been invited to take part in the work by sharing words, drawings, or memories, to be placed in a box at the museum or submitted digitally. Each contribution becomes part of a collective landscape that grows over time — a fragile archive of presences and absences.

For Shiota, “melting snow represents the final moments of something that is about to end, the echo of a silence dissolving.” The installation reflects on the transience of human bonds: just as snow melts, relationships change and fade, yet leave a trace behind. The threads evoke invisible connections, while the suspended names become memory.

The Moment the Snow Melts is conceived as a space for meditation, where loss is transformed into continuity and fragility becomes a possibility for renewal. Even what disappears, Shiota suggests, can generate a new spring.

Curated by Sara Rizzo, with the support of 24 ORE Cultura.