Olfacta Art Fair: A New Platform for Olfactory Art in Turin

The Olfacta Art Fair, a participatory project for ten artists and a network of independent spaces, will take place from September 18 to 20 at Edit Garden in Turin. Conceived by Francesca Casale and curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati, the fair deliberately adopts market lexicon to suspend its rules. In an interview, Casale discusses the paradigm shift in how olfactory art is perceived: once marginalized, it now challenges perceptual hierarchies and opens critical perspectives. She emphasizes that smell introduces a different temporality, evading image fixity and questioning conservation, documentation, and fruition conventions. Casale describes her creative process as starting from a conceptual question rather than a formal idea, weaving historical, scientific, anthropological, and cultural sources into olfactory compositions she considers a form of writing. She views the volatility of scent not as a limitation but as a design element, shifting value from object to relationship and from permanence to event. The fair aims to build a cultural infrastructure that legitimizes olfactory art as an autonomous contemporary practice, combining exhibition with curatorial and theoretical components. Casale states that the fair does not propose an alternative to the art system but attempts to expand its perimeter to accommodate practices that have remained marginal due to inadequate categories.