Tommaso Fiscaletti's exhibition in Cape Town

This morning, the exhibition The Appearance (Hemelliggaam or the Attempt to Be Here Now) by Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler opened as part of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, organized with the support of the Italian Consulate in Cape Town and under the patronage of the Italian Cultural Institute in Pretoria. The opening was attended by Italian Ambassador to South Africa Alberto Vecchi and Consul in Cape Town Giulio Mignacca.

Fiscaletti, originally from Pesaro, Italy, is a photographer and visual artist who has been based in Cape Town for years, exhibiting and publishing in both Italy and South Africa. Since 2018, he has collaborated with South African artist Nic Grobler to create Hemelliggaam, a visual archive comprising photographs, videos, and installations.

The Appearance presents itself as a visual investigation of the ancestral relationship between humans, the environment, and astronomy. Rooted in 20th-century South African science fiction, the project explores the intersections between astronomical progress and everyday reality.

The works that make up Hemelliggaam—presented here under the title The Appearance—can be described as "encounters." The images depict places where nature, humans, artifacts, and technology take on meanings beyond their immediate appearance, converging through a mysterious, ancestral act of magic with the unsettling silence of the sky, the night, and the vast landscapes of South Africa’s far southeast.

Fiscaletti and Grobler act as conscious witnesses of these encounters, collecting evidence, seeking new ones, and endlessly scanning the skies—toward the stars and beyond—as if searching for gateways to other universes.

The exhibition is the result of years of collaboration between the Italian Consulate, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair—the most important contemporary art fair on the African continent, known for launching artists onto the international stage.

The Appearance will be on view at the Central Methodist Mission in Cape Town from February 16 to March 4, 2024.

other exhibitions

all the exhibitions

exhibition09 November 2025 Paola Pivi’s exhibition I don’t like it, I love it opens at AGWA in Australia exhibition05 November 2025 Maurizio Cattelan Awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2026 agenda31 October 2025 "Art Under 35: The Foreign Challenge" exhibition18 September 2025 Italy and Lithuania in Kaunas: An Encounter between Nature and Creativity Echoes Between Forests and Mountains is the collateral exhibition of the 15th Kaunas Biennial (Lithuania), a collaboration between the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, the Italian Cultural Institute in Vilnius, the Kaunas Biennial and the Gherdëina Biennial.
The exhibition will be on display at the Kaunas City Museum and the Meno parkas Gallery from 12 September to 9 November 2025. It offers a stimulating dialogue between Italian artists — such as the Atelier dell'Errore collective, Arnold Holzknecht (Val Gardena, 1960) and Ruth Beraha (Milan, 1986) — and Lithuanian artists, including Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė, Andrius Arutiunian and Maximilian Oprishka.
The exhibition explores the complex relationship between nature, myth, technology and human intervention, inviting viewers to reflect on ecological processes, human stories and possible futures. The selected works offer new perspectives on the world, questioning the anthropocentric view and revealing the tension between beauty, instability and mystery.
The project is part of a broader two-year programme (2025-2026) dedicated to cultural exchange between Italy and Lithuania, aimed at promoting the artistic talents of both countries. The collaboration will conclude in 2026, when three Lithuanian artists will be guests at the 10th Gherdëina Biennale in Val Gardena (BZ), from 29 May to 13 September.
Atelier dell'Errore (AdE) is an artistic collective based in Reggio Emilia, dedicated to the visual and performing arts. Founded in 2015 by artist Luca Santiago Mora, the group now consists of 11 young neurodivergent artists.