Tommaso Durante

‘Limes’ is the Latin work for the limit, or boundary – a dividing line. Tommaso Durante’s artist’s book takes as it’s point of departure Canto III of the Inferno, the juncture in which Dante crosses through the threshold of the gate to Hell. During a trip to Aotearoa, Dante visited the Hell’s Gate mud springs in Rotorua; the images he took there immediately resonated for him with the Divine Comedy.

Limes arose from these photographs in a collaboration with poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe, who composed a text that also considers the traversal of boundaries. As humanity passes from an analogue into a digital, global age, both Durante and Wallace-Crabb felt that - as with Dante’s pilgrim beginning his journey - the ‘straight way’ has become lost. The text uses contemporary language and reference points, bridging the 13th and 21st centuries, and raising uneasy questions about modern life.