Olga Cafiero’s Cultus Langarum explores the history and oenological culture of the Langhe of Barolo, investigating the essential tension between tradition and innovation, the working world and environmental sustainability.
Through direct experience of the places and the re-use of documents and archive materials, Cafiero dwells on the wine-making processes codified in the 19th century, still in use today, to initiate a reflection on the elements that characterise today’s landscape from a morphological and cultural point of view, the use of the land and its identity.
The photographs of machinery, tools, amphorae and different soil compositions are taken from the archives of schools and public museums and reproduced neutrally – without intervention by the author – to place them in a timeless dimension.
The representation of today’s landscape is instead developed “in negative”, so as to tend towards abstraction, emphasising the shapes and geometries according to which this is organised and experienced.