In January 1985, Milan and Italy were struck by an extraordinary snowfall that paralyzed the city for several days. It was an exceptional event to which Giovanni Testori dedicated an editorial in Corriere della Sera on January 17, titled Blessed Are You, Sister Snow. For Testori, snow should not be seen as an annoying obstacle to the flow of city life, but as a unique opportunity to pause and reconnect—with oneself and with others—rediscovering the value of shared living and the meaning of time.
Forty years later, as Milan once again becomes a protagonist of winter thanks to the Milan–Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Casa Testori presents NEVEr alone, a multidisciplinary project curated by Davide Dall’Ombra, in which snow takes center stage. Through art, literature, cinema, photography, and science, snow is explored in all its aspects: from its poetic whiteness to the urgency of the climate issues it brings to light.
Curated by Giacomo Pigliapoco, the exhibition on the ground floor begins with a poetic and ambiguous image: snow falling, settling, and finally melting. An ephemeral presence, a silent layering—snow is an act of covering that, paradoxically, reveals. It erases the familiar outlines of the world, suspends ordinary time, and forces us to look anew. Within Casa Testori, snow sheds its purely atmospheric and meteorological dimension to become a transformative presence—one that, permeating reality, acts simultaneously upon the landscape and the human psyche.
In this vision—echoing that of Giovanni Testori—snow is not an act of burial, but of revelation: a gesture that awakens an authentic humanity too often clouded by haste and modern efficiency. Through the works of the twelve exhibiting artists, we are invited to perceive snow in this dual nature: not only as an element that isolates, cools, and freezes, but also as a force that, in its very silence, brings people closer together. It is a blanket that unites, a shared language that reestablishes forgotten bonds, opening spaces of encounter, solidarity, and care.
NEVEr alone thus becomes a lens through which to explore the dialectical relationships between isolation and intimacy, distance and closeness, silence and listening. It is an invitation to recognize—even in the most fragile and suspended moments—the web of relationships and mutual care that bind us inseparably. In its slow melting, snow reminds us that moments of melancholy and waiting are never final but lead to a renewed, shared warmth. Just as winter gives way to spring, individual sadness transforms into collective strength and regenerated trust in the future.
In melatonina, the project featured in the project room curated by Greta Martina (November 22, 2025 – January 17, 2026), choreographer and artist Elena Francalanci transforms the space into a realm suspended between sleep and wakefulness, isolation and confinement. The performance-installation melatonina is a response to the sense of captivity and frustration born from waiting and the continual cycle of trying and failing. The room hosts an installation and performative work—a sonic and gestural journey exploring the vulnerability of sleep and the intensity of awakening.
Inspired by the Scandinavian fairy tales Frau Holle and The Snow Queen, the piece examines sleep as metamorphosis, solitude, and danger: sleeping as an act of trust and profound surrender, linked to winter and somnambulism. The voice, evoking the oral nature of fairy tales, takes on physicality and gesture, shifting from whisper to cry, and finally to silence. The care that Gaia Nanni Costa devoted to crafting the garment worn by Francalanci recalls the skill of ancient spinning and weaving arts—practices that, in fairy tales, take on symbolic meaning.
The project La Via dei Laghi (The Path of the Lakes) by artist Simone Scardino, presented in the project room curated by Rosita Ronzini (January 24 – March 28, 2026), stems from the observation of new Alpine lakes created by glacial melt—fragile yet powerful symbols of climate change. Combining scientific research, imagination, and collective participation, the project room becomes a shared laboratory. Children are invited by the artist to “invent” new lakes—giving shape, name, and life to imaginary geographies. Drawings, collages, and maquettes compose the “play-track” installation at the heart of the room, a poetic and interactive space. The final work, built from the gestures and visions of the participants, reflects on the landscape as a space in transformation, where nature and community meet to imagine the future together.
Both the spark and the conclusion of the exhibition route, the 1985 snowfall is featured in the first-floor installation. The article that Testori dedicated to that event is juxtaposed with unpublished slides by photographer Mario De Biasi, who captured a snow-covered Milan—motionless yet intimate. Born in 1923, like Testori, De Biasi was by 1985 effectively a “retired photographer,” working out of personal need and the genuine pleasure of portraying the world around him. Recognized as one of the great names of Italian photographic neorealism, he also pursued technical experimentation and emotionally charged series devoted to beloved subjects—such as certain Milanese landmarks and scenes.
With his camera, De Biasi roamed the streets, parks, and squares of Milan during those days of heavy snow, turning them into iconic images. The refined and personal perspectives of De Biasi and Testori then give way to chronicles of those days and the memories of those who lived through them. The event’s exceptional nature made it the subject of reports, TV features, and even school essays, as well as projects like Zero – ovvero la famosa nevicata dell’85, the album released by Bluvertigo nearly fifteen years later, in 1999.
Testori’s enduring attention to snow—summed up in his 1985 editorial—returns to the fore in the final exhibition rooms, where snow flows through poems, letters, and texts dedicated to artists he loved—from Courbet to Varlin—testifying to the filial bond between the author and this element, capable of uniting nature and poetry in a single gesture.