The Cape Town Art Fair’s 2026 is “Listen”

print head: Shhh… How to listen to art

Some art fairs shout and some barely manage a whisper. The 2026 edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, taking place early this year, from February 20 to 22 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, has decided — boldly and unfashionably — to do neither. Instead, under the curatorial theme Listen, it leans forward, cups its ear, and asks something radical of its audience: to slow down and stop talking.

In a world that treats noise as proof of relevance, listening has become almost subversive. “In our current moment, listening truly is a radical act,” says the fair’s director, Laura Vincenti, who’s guided the fair from regional fixture to global cultural platform. With a degree in architecture, Vincenti has successfully blended Italian design styles with African materials, showcasing her creativity and keen eye, meticulous attention to detail, problem-solving skills, and natural aptitude for leadership, which have contributed to her success. Listening, she insists, isn’t always easy. “It isn’t a passive process either. Rather, it’s an active one requiring our embodied attention in the effort to empathise with others.” This isn’t the language of market share or footfall; it’s the language of ethics.

Art fairs, by design, encourage a particular kind of seeing: brisk, acquisitive, ocular. Vincenti is gently dismantling that habit. “In the art world, seeing is, for the most part, an automatic method to engage artworks,” she says. Listen proposes an alternative tempo. “Visitors are invited to adopt a different approach to encountering artworks: to listen, and in doing so, slowing down this process of engagement,” she says. The effect, she promises, won’t be theoretical but tangible. “This is a common thread woven into each facet making up the fair as a whole… its presence can be felt throughout.”

That philosophy manifests not as worthy silence but as rich, deliberate programming. The talks programme —often relegated to polite margins at art fairs — moves into the heart of the action. “Our talks programme hosts critical conversations amid the infectious energy of the fair itself,” Vincenti says. Alongside it come interactive, immersive workshops that invite visitors “to participate, create and explore in new, hands-on ways”. Even the guided art walks are designed as acts of attentiveness rather than tourism, returning with renewed emphasis on engagement.

Scale hasn’t been sacrificed on the altar of sensitivity. The 2026 fair hosts 126 exhibitors from 44 countries, including first-time participants from Douala, Palermo, and Lusaka. The temptation, at this point, would be to speak grandly of global reach and African identity as if they were opposing forces. Vincenti resists this framing. “Balancing international expansion with the fair’s identity… boils down to a matter of language,” she says. The fair, she explains, offers “a unique platform for exchange”, allowing galleries and artists to “find common ground among each other and across a rich variety of different cultures”.

What emerges from this convergence isn’t dilution but dialogue. “A common language emerges from these meaningful connections that take place at the fair,” Vincenti says, particularly within a Global South context where histories and social conditions often overlap. But she’s wary of simplification. “‘African identity’ is a difficult notion to consider, because it’s so nuanced and complex,” she says, pushing back against the idea of a singular continental voice. The fair’s location in Africa makes the conversation unavoidable, but never resolved. It’s an ongoing act of listening, she says.

Listening demands stillness, something few fairs encourage. “Sometimes, we forget the importance of standing still, and what these moments of pause can offer us,” Vincenti adds. The curatorial theme, she says, “offers a profound way of ‘seeing’ and connecting with art.” It asks us not merely to register images but “to process what we’re viewing by listening: to how artists’ voices resonate within us, and to how our deep emotions respond to them”. In the context of an art fair, this is almost mischievous.

The 2026 edition deepens this sensorial ambition with a new performance project and an expanded talks programme integrated directly into the fair. It would be easy to read this as a post-pandemic pivot toward experience, but Vincenti resists the narrative. “For me, our ‘deliberate’ push towards more immersion and participation… is less a response to a post-pandemic context, and more a natural progression for the fair,” she says. Engagement, she insists, has always been the point. These developments simply continue a trajectory “toward greater engagement through cross-cultural exchange… and to generate new knowledge and push the boundaries of contemporary discourses”.

That commitment to multiplicity is perhaps most clearly articulated in the fair’s curated sections: Tomorrows/Today, SOLO, Generations, and Cabinet/Record. Each is shaped by an external curator, ensuring, Vincenti says, “that a diverse range of backgrounds and creative practices are brought together into a shared conversation”. The sections are layered, both conceptually and physically, like overlapping voices rather than a single curatorial sermon.

Generations, curated by Tandazani Dhlakama, pairs artists at different stages of their careers in what Vincenti describes as a fostering of intergenerational dialogue. Titled Call and Response, it seeks “generative ways of disrupting uncomfortable silences”, favouring conversation over confrontation. Cabinet/Record, curated by Beata America, listens visually, expanding our understanding of photography as a record-keeping device and a sonic archive. Tomorrows/Today, under Dr Mariella Franzoni, draws from Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, asking how we remain awake in a world haunted by history yet alive with possibility. SOLO, curated by Céline Seror and titled Echoes of Humanity, invites visitors “to dwell in the in-between”, attending to voices carried by “winds, waters, and the living earth”.

Beyond the convention centre, the fair spills into the city. Through Unbound City, spaces such as The Gin Bar and AKJP Studio become satellites of the fair’s energy. “It would be a waste to confine this energy within just the walls of our fair venue,” Vincenti says. Unbound City, she explains, is about generosity — about “sharing what the fair produces, and to broaden the impact that this can have”. For one long weekend, Cape Town becomes, quite literally, a living exhibition. “The city really does transform into an exhilarating, living and breathing art experience,” she says.

Over her tenure, Vincenti has watched the perception of South African and African art shift decisively. “I’ve seen a more serious recognition of South African and African artists as established voices,” she says, noting the move away from the lazy exoticism that once framed the continent’s output as merely “trendy”. As exposure increased, so did integration into “more consolidated, stable collections”. Listening, it turns out, changes markets as much as minds.

When the lights dim and the city quiets again, Vincenti hopes the fair’s impact lingers in habits rather than headlines. “I hope that people practise listening in its truest sense,” she says. In a culture trained to react instantly, she advocates for delay. “I hope that we can move away from this current sensorial mindset… to stand back, wait, listen, and then respond.” It is advice that extends beyond the art world. “It offers a different approach to life.”

At an art fair that asks us not what we see, but what we hear — and how deeply — we might finally discover that listening isn’t the opposite of action, but its preferred beginning.