At the Edge of Identity

An exploration of human and animal identity through Photography and SoulCollage®  - In Tuscia and Maremma

Tuscania, Lazio · October 10–17, 2026 🔸 8 - 12 participants

What happens when we capture a poignant moment of contact and fix it in an image?
Who sees whom?
What remains of that encounter?
What do we choose to see - and what surfaces, surprising us with something we didn't know was in us?
Who do we become when an encounter changes us?
Are we willing to be touched? Changed?

The program begins with an encounter between our eyes and an animal or a particularity of the landscape: photographing becomes an act of communication and intimate inquiry. Water, plants, art and especially animals offer themselves as teachers of presence, spontaneity, power, vulnerability, witnessing.

We will work in Tuscia and Maremma - land of butteri, working horses, ancient landscapes often still intact - with the guidance of Lucrezia Testa Iannilli and Mariabruna Sirabella, in a retreat that layers photographic practice, encounters with animals (mostly horses) at multiple levels, and the creative methodology of SoulCollage®.

PHOTOGRAPHER & PERFORMER

A photographer and performer, Lucrezia works in contemporary art using interdisciplinary modes of inquiry — installations and performative cycles in dislocating spaces. The human body and the animal body — above all horses — are the leitmotif of many of her works and actions.

Born in Rome in 1977 to two painters, she began with linguistic studies before dedicating herself to the equestrian world, training as a federal riding instructor in Switzerland and Canada. She then developed her photographic and artistic language across Belo Horizonte, London, Paris, and Palermo, working as a freelance art director and set photographer. She collaborates with international institutions in the field of contemporary art through installations, residencies, exhibitions, and performance.

Her long-term project Game of Vanth brings humans and animals together in site-specific performances and installations to give form to visions of the immaterial — a research that moves through archaeological parks, galleries, urban spaces, and open countryside. It is this same inquiry that lies at the heart of this program.

LUCREZIATESTAIANNILLI.COM

CATALYST · FACILITATOR · GUIDE

Mariabruna Sirabella is a retreat facilitator, ritualistic guide, artist, author, and SoulCollage® Lead Trainer. She is the founder of SoT0 — the School of the Origins — an experiential culture of learning rooted in the Intelligences of Nature. She has facilitated programs internationally since the 80s. 

SoT0 maps the living invisible forces of the natural world through the lens of the Four Elements - Fire, Earth, Water, and Air - and the sixteen Intelligences she has learned to identified within them. Her work invites direct encounter with their presence through creativity, movement, sound, SoulCollage®, and shamanic soul journeys.

She has worked with and alongside Seena Frost, the founder of SoulCollage®, since 1996, and has trained hundreds of facilitators internationally.  Her “Laurea” from the University of Bologna explored the origin of theater and Theatre Anthropology — focusing on ancient classical and fold dances,  healing rituals and trance practices in the tribal areas of Southern India and Brazil. She holds a Master of Science in Counseling from California State University. 

She has apprenticed under several teachers, foremost among them the late Ai-Chu-Rekh, a well known shaman from Tuva. 

MARIABRUNA.COM

The intention is not to take beautiful photographs of animals. We gather to be with them — to see what happens in us and between us when we meet without preconceptions.
The program unfolds through encounters at different levels of intensity and contact, from direct physical proximity to the symbolic and archetypal. We cannot, and do not want to, anticipate what may happen. The field is open. We create situations that invite possibility, and each of us will act - or not - according to our own intuition.

In Sandro's Stables

A first approach: observation, proximity, the body language that precedes photography. How do we draw close to something wild or powerful? What does the camera bring to this encounter - and what does it take away?

The Horses at the Finca

Ground work in freedom, without fixed expectations. The horses come to us. Or they don't. Photography is born from what happens without forcing.

The Mariotti Farm — Butteri, Maremma Oxen, Working Horses

Here the animal is engaged in an ancient relationship with the human. Not merely domesticated in the current sense — above all in a relationship of collaboration. We will visit the archaeological park at Vulci and work in an ancient landscape dense with the memory of ancestors and the long reciprocity between humans and animals.

Rosa's Garden, the Vulci Archeological Park, and the Etruscan Ancestors at Lorenzo's Farm

Other encounters, other presences. The boundary between past and present blurs in this territory. We follow where the images, our curiosity and emotions, lead us.

The Tarot Garden — Giardino dei Tarocchi, Capalbio

A half-day at Niki de Saint Phalle's Giardino dei Tarocchi - one of the most singular places in Italy. Monumental inhabitable sculptures, archetypal figures in the Maremma landscape. A place to photograph the symbolic made matter - mosaic as a form of collage - in a garden deeply loved by Seena Frost, the founder of SoulCollage®. We will recognize figures from the Tarot and discover how they illuminate the creative work ahead.
ilgiardinodeitarocchi.it

SoulCollage® is a creative practice developed by Seena B. Frost: small collage cards made intuitively from found images - magazine photographs, prints, fragments - each card revealing itself as a mirror of an inner aspect, an archetype that guides us, a voice of the soul.

We collage using the work of others. But to do so we must say "yes to this, or no to that" - and in that sequence of choices and adjustments, the image becomes ours. With photography, the challenge is to capture - in a sense, to create - images from what surrounds us. What will we do with these images? What will they reveal, what will they tell us?

We can select, crop, frame - and here too we say "yes to this, or no to that" through the camera's lens. Or is it through the lens of our soul? In both cases we are compelled to choose, and the choice reveals a speckle of who we are.

Through analytical language and the creation of symbolic, contemporary, evocative images, the program challenges us to reinterpret ourselves - through the emergence of a hybrid figure that becomes a metaphor for the transformations of our time: a historical moment in which the relations between human beings, animals, and ecosystems are taking on new configurations.

Nature is not a backdrop to our lives. It is the original language — the one spoken before words, before thought, before the distance created by what is called civilization. When we sit with an animal, under a tree, by a body of water, we are given the opportunity to remember a conversation that never stopped. As we rediscover that all beings, creatures and things are our brothers and sisters, we open to receive their wisdom and their love.

- MARIABRUNA SIRABELLA

The images produced during the retreat in Tuscania will be a dialogue between rural landscapes, natural environments, and animal and human bodies - a visual reflection on the possibility of new cohabitations between species.
The practice of SoulCollage® will invite awareness of the archetypal meanings revealed in the printing of photographs, and of their possible use in SoulCollage® cards - illuminating deep meaning at both the artistic and personal level.

During the retreat we will print a selection of photographs taken by you. Some will enter directly into SoulCollage® cards. Others will reveal other purposes. The image made by your own hands becomes material for discovering something you did not yet know was yours.

Based in Tuscania
A small medieval walled town in Tuscia, northern Lazio — lively, compact, walkable, safe.

Getting There
A private bus will transfer the group between Rome Fiumicino airport and Tuscania on arrival (October 10) and departure (October 17). Pick-up time is set at 2:00 pm for arrival and departure is usually set at 8am— please take this into account when booking your flight. If you cannot be at the airport on those days, contact us and we will suggest transportation alternatives.

Accommodation
We have compiled a list of places to stay within the walls at different price points. You may also consult Booking and Airbnb. Choose what suits you. We will send the list with your registration confirmation. We recommend booking as early as possible.
All options are a short walk from where we gather. Walking is necessary and inevitable within the walls of Tuscania — and in the rural areas we will visit.

How to register

Minimum enrollment: This program requires a minimum of 8 participants to run. If we do not reach 8 registrations by August 15, 2026, the program will be cancelled and all payments — including deposits — will be refunded in full.
We will confirm the program is running by August 15 at the latest. We strongly recommend purchasing travel insurance for your flight or booking a refundable fare.

------- OCTOBER IN TUSCIA

Warm enough to work outside, cool enough to sleep deeply. The harvest is in.
Most tourists are gone. The light is often magnificent. We have chosen this window deliberately. It is a good time to be here.

---------  QUESTIONS? We are glad to hear from you - mail@mariabruna.com

©Mariabruna Sirabella. All Rights Reserved