The Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan hosts, from December 5, 2025, to January 23, 2026, SATURNALIA, a collective exhibition curated by Olga Gambari and Susanna Ravelli, with the general direction of Maria Fratelli, involving 16 artists.

The chosen title evokes an ancient Roman holiday, the Saturnalia, celebrated from December 17 to 23, in honor of Saturn, a pagan holiday that was later incorporated into Christian tradition, absorbing its meaning and practice.

The Saturnalia were characterized by banquets, gift exchanges, but above all by a temporary reversal of social roles, with slaves being able to behave like free men, creating a sense of brotherhood and equality among social classes. The festival was dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture and the Golden Age, a mythical period of peace and abundance, of equality, when there were no social differences and people lived in harmony. A period that, by familiarity, evokes the lost Christian Eden.

Referring to this tradition, the project aims to reflect on the Christmas holiday and recontextualize it as a landscape from which to extract key words that are part of the deep meaning of this celebration, but also belong to a vision of community, of the individual subject becoming plural, of a time and a collective good beyond time, geographies, and cultures.

In this dimension, the idea of one's own responsibility in the world emerges, not only as an individual but as an interdependent part of a social community, which needs to rediscover itself in solidarity values and in a humanism that reaffirms its cohesion.

Christmas can thus embody a vision that is not exclusively sacred but also secular regarding common themes and values. From this open type of interpretation, one of the quintessential Christian holidays becomes a space of welcome, encounter, and community. A multicultural and transversal, ethical and human perspective.

A practice, a ritual therefore of a secular nature, which in the common celebration leads to a communal reflection on balances and purposes, in a symbolic moment of the year, a passage.