Vela Projects is proud to present The Atlas Folio, the much anticipated large-format book forming a part of Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler’s project Hemelliggaam or The Attempt To Be Here Now.
Spanning over a decade of research, Hemelliggaam (Afrikaans for ‘heavenly body’) is an archive of original photographs, video works and installations, exploring the profound links between humanity, astronomy, and the South African landscape. Inspired not only by the physical footprint of astronomy, but also by the existential nature of the inquiry itself, Fiscaletti and Grobler together build a story suspended between what is visible and what can only be imagined.
As a starting point, the archive features images of astronomical sites — the Square KilometerArray in Carnarvon, the Tswaing Crater in Pretoria, a particle accelerator in Somerset West— together with allusive landscapes exploring the strange, numinous nature of the greater Karoo. Alongside these sensitive photographic studies are portraits of the people who make up these communities: amongst others an amateur telescope builder in the Cederberg, and a night assistant in Sutherland. Furthering and punctuating this archive are passages of text, objects, glass plate negatives, and fragments drawn from Afrikaans science fiction, including Jan Rabie's Hemelboom (1971),which, when taken as a whole, create an assemblage of stories and elements connected through the vast silence of the sky.
What emerges throughout this project is the most essential, necessary qualities of humanity – curiosity and resilience in the midst of the unknown, and a capacity for imagination when encountering something we cannot yet understand.
Taking inspiration from the scientific atlases of the past, The Atlas Folio highlights numerous key photographs which have been taken during the project thus far. The book, custom-bound in a special edition of three, spans over a meter wide when open and supersedes the expectations for a book of its nature. Each page is printed giclée–with museum quality pigments on rich Baryta paper–producing exhibition-ready prints with vast tonal range and depth.
This showcase of bound images thus blurs the line between art-book and art-object, marking the territories passed, and mapping the vast constellation of stories visited throughout this project in a unique and immersive form.
Vela Project’s special presentation introduces the archive of Hemelliggaam or The Attempt To Be Here Now and allows The Atlas Folio to stand as the culmination of Fiscaletti and Grobler’s exceptional project of recording one of mankind’s most ambitious endeavors.
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Hemelliggaam or The Attempt To Be Here Now, has been shown at the Pretoria Art Museum (2021); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo & Fondazione Oelle (2019-2020); the Carnarvon Museum & Kareeberg Library (2019); IAF Basel, Theaterplatz (2018); and the Iziko Museums of South Africa (2018), among others.
It has been supported by The Italian Cultural Institute; the National Research Foundation (NRF); the Institute of Italian Culture, Pretoria; Consulate of Italy in Cape Town; Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation; University of the Western Cape; and the City of Tshwane.
The project was among the winners of the CAP Prize 2018.
