On Zamalek’s Nocturnal Vegetation 

The gaze is always directed towards the sky.

Jacopo Valentini is a visual artist and researcher who explores landscape in a way that transcends the mere representation of a place and perceives it as a complex system of relationships between space, memory, culture, and imagination. 

Through photography and installation, he constructs topographies that question the ways in which territories are perceived, recognised and transformed. His practice is grounded in extensive research that combines historical sources, archives, literature, architecture, and direct observation, translated into images that open up new ways of reading and interpreting a place.

His newest project, On Zamalek’s Nocturnal Vegetation (2026), continues this investigation by focusing on vegetation as a revealing element of Zamalek’s urban and cultural stratifications. Plants, trees, and gardens become traces through which to observe a landscape shaped by human intervention, history, and the city’s ongoing transformation. Vegetation thus moves beyond a purely decorative role to become a tool of investigation—a living presence that reveals relationships between nature and culture, private and public, and memory and contemporaneity.

Credits: Artwork: Jacopo Valentini • Funded by: The European Union in Egypt in cooperation with EUNIC Egypt (EU National Institutes for Culture), Italian Cultural Institute in Cairo • Project Execution: Wasla for Arts •

Time: Weekdays 6-10 PM // Weekends 2-10 PM