I will trust anyone who wears Hermès’ Un Jardin sur le Nil. Smell is one of the fastest ways by which to access emotions and memories. My most recent works have been dealing with the eroticism and ambitions associated with perfume. I had skimmed forums like fragrantica, the parfumo app and social media for descriptions of fragrances by consumers and perfume lovers. In my series “Deployed airbag. That burning scent I wish I could forget.” these different voices were juxtaposed with images of bruises inflicted in car accidents that left the victims’ arms branded with the respective car producer’s logo. These motives were then etched into warm glimming copper plates. Another work the title of which is the image of a fur coat placed over the backrest of a park bench paired hardware store materials with the names of iconic perfumes. An unspecified liquid sprayed on the different surfaces left viewers guessing what they were seeing and smelling.
Apart from the obvious – the composition and practicalities of making fragrances – I am interested in the psychology of smell. The creation of a legacy, alignment with history, careful association with colours, materials, objects, personas, and concepts are relevant ideas to my practice.
I often look to the public space, both as an action field and as a metaphor for conflicting
experiences and desires.
The implicit history of objects that inscribes itself into their substance is an endless resource to my practice and I find myself fascinated with the things that often go unnoticed: scenery, debris, buildup. I think of them as relaxing matter, something to rest our eyes and mind on. They give us a real sense of a place, beyond what we can rationally understand, lending texture and specificity to a moment. This kind of presentness is what we remember later on.
When I feel out of my depth, I have a tendency to cling to concept, logic, and hard facts because they are so much easier to grasp and judge. But I resist this reflex in my practice, instead working intuitively and with a processual approach. Accumulating objects and combining them guided by their form and feel and letting the objects speak for themselves rather than directing their meaning too much. I am drawn to the poetry of leaving things out. Empty space, gaps, and darkness function like a screen. This is why night walks are so enjoyable. The illuminated windows like little stages to the scenes that we direct in our heads. A run-down façade or an abandoned plot of land allow projections of a beautiful past, a potential future.
Titles and material lists, as well as any other written content, are treated equal to the other materials that I use in my assemblages. By this I mean that every information is chosen based on its emotional and aesthetic qualities, using the mind as an extension of the exhibition space.