The Atlas Folio is the large-format book at the heart of Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler’s project Hemelliggaam or The Attempt To Be Here Now.
More than a decade in the making, 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.
Moving across astronomical sites such as the Square Kilometre Array in Carnarvon and the Tswaing Crater near Pretoria, through the numinous landscapes of the greater Karoo and into portraits of the people and communities who inhabit these places, Fiscaletti and Grobler weave a story punctuated by passages of text, found glass-plate negatives, and fragments drawn from Afrikaans science fiction — together forming a penumbral assemblage connected through the vast silence of the sky.
Taking inspiration from the scientific atlases of the past, The Atlas Folio gathers many of the key photographs made during the project so far. Custom-bound in an edition of three, the book spans over a metre wide when open. Each page is printed giclée with museum-quality pigments on True Baryta paper, producing exhibition-ready prints of vast tonal range and depth. Carefully hand-made and individually printed, it blurs the line between art-book and art-object.
Vela Projects’ 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 project of recording one of humankind’s most ambitious endeavours. The book will be presented again at Paris Photo in 2026.
Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler — The Atlas Folio
2026 · hardcover · 705 × 535 × 85 mm · 101 pp · edition of three
