Latent Xylella, 2025

Latent Xylella is a triptych of olive trees generated by a GAN algorithm, trained on over 10,000 photos taken in the Salento fields affected by Xylella.

Developed according to Green AI principles, the algorithm shapes a landscape suspended between memory and loss. The images, emerging from the neural network’s latent space, evoke an imaginary archive of what once was in the past and perhaps will never be again in the future: evanescent trees, like fading imprints. The triptych, a secular echo of the sacred, pays homage to the olive tree as a symbol of Apulian identity and resistance.

Inspired by Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the work reflects on the agricultural and environmental future of the region, passing through the living ruins of wounded landscape.

Latent Xylella imagines new roots from what remains, in a land scarred yet still able to tell its story.