The Snow Abides by Nina Viviana Cangialosi

“‘The Snow Abides’ is a personal investigation into absence, oblivion, and death, but it also explores the persistence of memory and life after death, even though the substance has changed.”

What happens to the memory of those who are no longer with us, to the substance of their memories? Are these fragments of living memories connected to us and somehow eternal, renewing their form through interaction with us? Can we preserve the memories of another person, becoming indirect, reflected witnesses?

Some verses by Robert Walser serve as the fil rouge, weaving through a heterogeneous collection of images: photos captured with a smartphone or expired films, serving as aide-mémoire for a personal journey; a pixelated photo of a deer taken by a friend shortly before her passing, still residing on the camera I use; the absent gaze of my mother in an old photo from my father’s film archive. In addition, images from NASA archives engage in an ongoing dialogue with illustrations by the Paracelsian physician Robert Fludd.

“How small life is here
and how big nothingness.

The sky, tired of light,
has given everything to the snow.”

— Robert Walser

‘The Snow Abides’ is a personal investigation into absence, oblivion, and death, but it also explores the persistence of memory and life after death, even though the substance has changed. Seeking answers in the universal order and mysteries of the cosmos, it becomes the sole means to unveil the invisible laws that govern our microcosm — “two entities, where one is a scaled reproduction of the other, and due to their resemblance, they form an indivisible whole—an unity where the parts are in relation to the entirety”.