I am Alessandra and I am a musician.

When I heard about my cancer diagnosis, I decided to turn this hard experience into an artistic project. Amongst share-filled meetings between people who have gone through the same experience of illness as me, and through frequent physical suffering, I managed to realise what might have seemed impossible: NOMA. A multimedial work with a strong driving cause: an illness that becomes a vehicle for transforming the most intimate fears into vital energy. NOMA from Greek idioms means laceration, NOMA is a part of the carci-noma, NOMA is a noma-de (nomadic) journey. A journey to find oneself, to re-discover the essence, to reject the unnecessary. NOMA is a Book, a Soundtrack, an Autobiographical Musical Documentary Film that gave me the opportunity, through Art, to send out a clear message: ‘prevention is the medicine of the future’.

From this experience, I clearly understood that my personal Opera, had to become a Choral Opera. Thus, in 2016 I set up the Noma World Association, formed by a group of artists who had experienced an illness and experienced firsthand the benefits of ‘making Art’. Together we devised and developed an experimental artistic method, S.O.M.A. (Spazio Olistico per la Medicina dell'Anima, Holistic Space for the Medicine of the Soul), based on the organisation of Artistic Workshops, conceived as immersive installations, in which the participants are actively involved in the creative process, and artistic expressiveness becomes a harmonious instrument of re-connection, sharing, and poetic resilience. Today, my dream has come true: for the first time in Turin, Artistic Creation has been joined with medical disciplines (through measurements of the brain's electrical signals), and the results of S.O.M.A. Art and Neuroscience interactions have been presented. Our artistic method, now also supported by scientific research, is now crossing disciplinary boundaries and combining ideas and energies for the human being wellness.