On Tuesday, July 15, Co.As.It. launched Italian Journey, an exhibition by photographer and artist Moses Tan. Featuring 35 photographs and three digital drawings, the show offers a view of Italy through the eyes of someone who wasn’t born there, but has come to embrace it as his own. It showcases the many pockets of the country, and aims to be a conversation between cultures and identities.

Welcoming the audience was Paolo Baracchi, head of the cultural program at Co.As.It., who opened the evening by highlighting how Italy remains a powerful emotional and cultural touchstone for many.

“For those with Italian heritage,” Baracchi noted, “it’s the homeland of migrant memories. But for everyone, it represents beauty, history and a way of life celebrated around the world.”

“Italy has a universal appeal,” he added, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it always manages to draw you in. Moses’s work captures this beautifully, inviting us to look at the country with fresh eyes.”

Born in Malaysia and raised in Australia, Moses Tan’s story is one of movement, longing and imagined returns. “China, where my grandparents came from, was this huge, blurry idea,” he recalled. “We sent money back, but as a child I didn’t really understand why. Years later, I realised the only way to ease that sense of nostalgia was to visit the place myself.”

According to Tan, the same has happened with Italy. “I’ve often wondered when my fascination began. Maybe with films like Ben Hur [and] Gladiator. Then came the composers: Puccini, Monteverdi; and eventually I fell in love with Italy’s visual arts.”

His “fascination” has led to a continuous search between beauty and distance. The images on display - open to the public free of charge until September 25 - capture a side of Italy far from tourist trails.

Sicilian villages like Fiumedinisi and Casalvecchio Siculo, mist-shrouded glimpses of Venice and rooftops brushing against dusk “paths that vanish into the unknown”.

This is an Italy depicted in stillness, in silence and often outside of time. As Baracchi describes it, the Bel Paese is “a motherland, a place of universal human interest”.

“These photos aren’t meant to document,” Tan explained. “They’re meant to evoke. I’m interested in the relationship between people and landscape, between history and what remains of it.

“Sometimes you just turn a corner, step into an empty church and discover a forgotten masterpiece. That’s what happened with some of Michelangelo’s works in Italy.”

Tan thanked the audience and his family, recalling one special moment in Sicily when a former police officer named Giuseppe took them deep into the countryside. “That’s where the first five photos in the exhibition were born,” he shared.

Italian Journey is part of Co.As.It.’s cultural program, which has supported the Italian-Australian community since 1968. But today, the program has expanded, fostering dialogue and cross-cultural exchange.

“This exhibition perfectly embodies that mission,” Baracchi said. “Moses Tan may not be Italian, but his deep appreciation for Italy, his connection to its land and culture, reflects an inclusive spirit.”

And it’s within this framework that Tan’s work finds its deeper meaning: a journey of reflection, aesthetics and identity.

Among the most admired works are a series of images of Burano - a true “study in colour” -and a section titled Pastorali, where nature and history converge in abandoned farmhouses.

Through his photographs, Tan invites us to see what we think we already know with new eyes, finding beauty in the everyday. It’s an invitation to embark on both a material and existential journey.

To close the evening on a sweet and light-hearted note, a young guest stole the show.
Tan’s niece, little Zaliyah Tan Coates, charmed the crowd with a shy but flawless “Spero che vi piaccia” (“I hope you like it”).