Photos by Marc Turlan
Words by Steve Marais
Exhibition at CASETTA STUDIO until 30 September 2025
(Viewable by appointment)
Curated by Anton (Collatéral) Sibenaler

Untamed French Artist and his Italian friends create rural “wank” exhibition in Italy’s ravaged south, locals peek with flashlights because it’s amazing.

In short: Marc Turlan photographs his friends, lovers, and his actual husband and exhibits all the horny evidence life-sized at CASETTA STUDIO, located in a dead olive-tree plague zone in Italy’s deep south where agricultural monoculture spectacularly failed. His exhibition “Cruising Giardini” runs by appointment until September 30, 2025. Cosimo and Emanuele, the two queer Italian founders with big dreams and private funds, are grafting homosexual desire onto this ecological disaster zone. They’re showcasing Pasolini-inspired erotic obsessions and eco-sex pioneering that turns cruising into resistance and resistance into hope and agricultural collapse into an untamed garden of queer possibility that’s definitely not safe for work. The whole thing was curated by Turlan’s friend and muse Anton Sibenaler (Collatéral), who’s also a Feral contributor, and below is plenty of visual evidence of Anton’s HARD work during the setup of the exhibition.

Could the collapse of the olive groves mirror other failing systems—social, cultural, sexual? Turlan flips the idea. Instead of queer communities being fragile like dying trees, he thinks queer resilience could become a model for ecological recovery. “In Casetta’s garden, more than 90 trees have been replanted. That’s resistance, that’s hope! “The queer narrative is under attack everywhere,” Turlan acknowledges. “But resistance is also taking root everywhere.”

Photos by Marc Turlan
Words by Steve Marais
Exhibition at CASETTA STUDIO until 30 September 2025
(Viewable by appointment)
Curated by Anton (Collatéral) Sibenaler

Untamed French Artist and his Italian friends create rural “wank” exhibition in Italy’s ravaged south, locals peek with flashlights because it’s amazing.

In short: Marc Turlan photographs his friends, lovers, and his actual husband and exhibits all the horny evidence life-sized at CASETTA STUDIO, located in a dead olive-tree plague zone in Italy’s deep south where agricultural monoculture spectacularly failed. His exhibition “Cruising Giardini” runs by appointment until September 30, 2025. Cosimo and Emanuele, the two queer Italian founders with big dreams and private funds, are grafting homosexual desire onto this ecological disaster zone. They’re showcasing Pasolini-inspired erotic obsessions and eco-sex pioneering that turns cruising into resistance and resistance into hope and agricultural collapse into an untamed garden of queer possibility that’s definitely not safe for work. The whole thing was curated by Turlan’s friend and muse Anton Sibenaler (Collatéral), who’s also a Feral contributor, and below is plenty of visual evidence of Anton’s HARD work during the setup of the exhibition.

At the centre of it all is French artist Marc Turlan. His work is direct. The site-specific installation features men, naked or nearly so, and he wants you to know it’s about cruising. “Cruising is universal,” he says. “I think art and cruising are closely related in how they both engage with desire. It’s free, intense, and wild.” The photographs hang life-size on fabric and in poster format, covering the inside and outside walls. They’re shown alongside mosaic works inspired by four authors central to Turlan’s practice: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Hervé Guibert, Sarah Kane, and Marguerite Duras.

What does this have to do with a dying Italian orchard? That’s the mission of founders Cosimo Caroppo and Emanuele Gatto. CASETTA STUDIO opened in March 2024 on the Salento peninsula, where monoculture has spectacularly failed. Their big idea is something they call “grafting”—forcing something new onto something old. They want to graft a queer perspective onto a place of binarism, neglect, and monoculture. “This age-old monoculture thinking is killing our landscape,” they say.

They’re thinking big. The project aims to connect the “local and global South.” The summer program kicked off in July with PROIEZIONI D’ESTATE, a night of video screenings. They showed “Imagine The Earth Is Your Lover” curated by eco-sex pioneers Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, alongside “Fixations,” a series about erotic obsessions curated by BUTT magazine.

During installation, locals showed curiosity. “People were peeking over the wall,” Turlan notes. The local community seems to get it—the founders report that their audience is “impressed by how the images dialogue with the external environment,” seeing the erotic nudes as part of a “broader whole.” On opening night, “two boys climbed onto the outer wall and used their phone lights to illuminate the photos after dark, as if exploring a cave.” One young visitor inside passionately commented on each photo in Italian. “I didn’t understand his words, but seeing his energy and his friends’ reactions delighted me,” Turlan recalls.

Could the collapse of the olive groves mirror other failing systems—social, cultural, sexual? Turlan flips the idea. Instead of queer communities being fragile like dying trees, he thinks queer resilience could become a model for ecological recovery. “In Casetta’s garden, more than 90 trees have been replanted. That’s resistance, that’s hope! “The queer narrative is under attack everywhere,” Turlan acknowledges. “But resistance is also taking root everywhere.”

How do they fund this brave experiment? “Casetta Studio is currently a private project,” the founders state simply. “Our resources come from our own funds and donations from supporters.” It’s an operation funded by belief, and the freedom has in turn invigorated Turlan. “This project has made me want to discover even more cruising spaces! ;)”, he says with a winking emoji.

The exhibition is viewable by appointment until September 30.