Tortona Stories is an exploration of the Italian countryside through the transect of mountaintop to river plain. The project traces discrete phenomena in the Tortona region, where entrepreneurs and businesses, motivated by economic, administrative, and cultural forces are shaping the countryside through the products they make.

Tortona Stories looks at how products, and by proxy the countryside, are mediated by these broader forces, manifested in a network of seemingly unrelated objects: guides, product catalogues, government laws, news clippings, prizes, brochures, etc. Ultimately, the countryside is a product of this mediation, birthed from words, images, laws, and ideas. The exhibition selects a case-study area where the plain, the hills and the mountains give a schematic reading of the Italian countryside and can be perceived as an example of a more general condition.

The exhibition is made by a simple composition of old pieces of furniture and a table, where different objects referred to the typical production of the Tortona region and representative of the tradition and lifestyles of the territory are located, combined with captions and interpretative diagrams. The exhibition space is crowned by photographs, soothed in loco by Filippo Romano and held on panels above the furniture.