Scented Scenographics and Olfactory Art: Making Sense of Scent in the Museum

Abstract

In this article, I look at the meaning of scent as art, as exhibited artefact, and as an experience-heightening scenographic agent to create a multisensory whole in the museum. I discuss olfactory art, perfume exhibitions, and scented scenographics using fragrance as communication tools and highlighting the sense of smell as a key factor in the sensory and bodily communication of scented events. In the exhibition Art of Scent 1889–2012 (New York 2013), perfume was exhibited as artwork, stylistically compared to art history. The exhibition Perfume (London 2017) visualized the fragrances in scented scenographies where the stories conveyed by the perfumes where conceptualized. Belle Haleine. The Scent of Art (Basel 2015) exhibited olfactory artworks, among them the smell of fear. This is compared to scented scenographics at play in contemporary visual art at the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) 2019. Scent as a bearer of meaning in the museum is fundamentally about communicating through multiple senses – and creating interesting exhibitions. It also conveys, however, new aspects of culture and transforms our understanding of the meaning of scent.

Somerset House, London, 9 July 2017:

From afar, I see an unmade bed, covered in white sheets. The sheets are rumpled and the bed dominates the confined space in the otherwise empty room. Curious, I enter. When I approach the bed, a sulphurous whiff of stale sweat combined with the milky and slightly nauseating smell of semen hit me in the face and I gag. My reaction is instantaneous. I take a step back and inhale a few deep breaths to adjust my sense of smell to the new sensation. Entering again, I detect soft notes of sandalwood and powdery musks intermingling with the body odours, and a metallic, slightly blood-like note stings my nose. The experience is brutally physical, the smell fills the room, my nostrils; and subsequently my entire body with its presence.

Why should we care about smell?

The experience as described above is my own encounter with an artwork in a museum, one that leans heavily on a multisensory and embodied approach rather than a more traditionally visual one. Together with the bed, the smell creates a vivid and present narrative. This installation is one of many immersive displays aiming to convey the meaning of perfume in scented scenographies exhibited at Somerset House, London. The exhibition, Perfume – A Sensory Journey through Contemporary Scent was one of several attempts in recent years to explore the sense of smell within the confines of a museum.

Because we experience the world around us through our senses, the topic has received an increasing focus within the humanities in recent years. An example is W.J.T. Mitchell, who states that there are no entirely ‘visual media’, but that other senses are always involved in a visual experience.¹ Paul Duncum in turn encourages a multisensory approach in studies of art and cultural sciences and introduces the concept of multiliteracy (understanding how different communication systems interact) as necessary to understand art and culture.² Laura Marks talks about the multisensory qualities in film and how different ways of seeing can invoke a multisensory and bodily experience of what is shown on the screen.³

How can something invisible, like a fragrance, be exhibited and understood as meaningful in a museum? To answer this, I will make a scented journey from high-end perfume to the mundane smell of body odour in order to discuss the potential of scented scenography and olfactory art. Doing so, I will highlight some of the curatorial and communicative challenges faced while working with scent as a bearer of meaning in the museum. I will introduce my theoretical perspectives and then analyse examples from recent museum exhibitions, all communicating through scent, in order to explain how scent can be understood and utilized to convey meaning.

From aroma design to scented scenographics

Scented scenography is not a new phenomenon. Multiple examples show how smell technologies have been used in theatre settings to create atmospheres – from the heavy use of olfactory elements such as burned wood, fragrant herbs or animal blood in Greek dramas, the modernist exploration of odour during the early twentieth century, to contemporary scratch-n-sniff movies.⁴

According to Sally Banes, the adoption of odour in staged performances has gained traction over the last decades, even if she argues that the deliberate use of what she calls ‘aroma design’ is still relatively rare. She defines aroma as ‘a mode of communication that, like any other element in the mise en scène, can be used for artistic effects and thus analysed and interpreted’.⁵ We are, however, unaccustomed to using smell as our primary sense of orientation, in the theatre or otherwise. Susan L. Feagin notes that smell is downplayed by the ever dominating sense of vision, or as she puts it, the ‘bully in the sensorium’.⁶ This has to do with the notion of smell as being primitive or unprecise, as well as its general unruliness and the technical difficulties associated with scent dispersion and use. She points to the crux of the matter: we do not know how to handle smell or even how to talk about it. One way to come to terms with this, I argue, is to discuss, systematically analyse, and critically consider what smell really does.

To analyse aroma in a staged event, Banes has created a taxonomy of theatrical aroma design based on the effect, or representational function, of the odours. She proposes categories such as aromas that illustrate words, characters, places; or evoke mood or ambiance; aromas that complement or contrast aural/visual signs; or summon memories; aromas that frame the staged event as a ritual; serve as a distancing device or even unrecognizable aromas.⁷

The most commonly used categories are the first two – aroma as illustration and aromas that create a mood/ambiance. These are often used to enhance the reality aspect of what is heard or seen during the performance, for example the smell of food when we see a meal being prepared on stage. The last two categories, on the other hand, – aroma as a distancing device, and to some extent also unrecognizable aromas – are used to undermine instead of heighten said realism. These categories work semiotically as different kinds of signs. They are not meant to be mutually exclusive; an odour may well serve different purposes or have multiple effects. The illustrative and mood-evoking aromas work as iconic signs, for example the smell of booze and cigarette smoke to recreate the late-night mood in a bar. The aromas that frame an event as a ritual could be understood as symbolic signs, such as the use of incense to create a reference to religion.

Sally Banes’ main interest is the use of odour in a theatre setting, but from my perspective, this model is also useful when analysing scented effects, what scent does in scenographic events outside the theatre.

I study scented scenography from an art history – and visual culture perspective, inspired by a concept of scenography expanded beyond traditional theatrical settings. Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer discuss scenography as ‘a mode of encounter and exchange founded on spatial and material relations between bodies, objects, and environments.’⁸ This means that expanded scenography is about the meetings and reactions between places, actors, spectators, and material objects. From my perspective, this also includes scents. This opens up for scenographic thinking outside the theatre, in any event or designed setting, as well as in everyday life. This widened view of scenography is initially useful when I examine the role of scent as a key factor in the multisensory communication of the museum exhibition as a staged event.

With a background in art history and visual studies, my way of understanding ‘expanded scenography’ in this article is a theoretical position similar to how I perceive ‘visual culture’ and how visual culture as a way of thinking has contributed new perspectives to art history. I am interested in how an expanded understanding of scenography, described by McKinney and Palmer as ‘at once a tool, a system, a process, and a generative organism for understanding the complex environment in which we live’, can potentially add new dimensions to the manner through which we comprehend multisensory art, objects, and events.⁹

Sodja Lotker and Richard Gough express a similar view when they discuss scenography and its embodied effects on the spectators. They explain, “We engage with scenography, with the performative environments, not only by observing and mentally engaging with them, but by ‘observing’ with our whole bodies; these environments, these scenographies move us. They disturb us, challenge us, and affect us”.¹⁰

The widened way of thinking about scenography could be construed as a tool to comprehend how we are affected by all kinds of events and settings but could also potentially dilute the concept of scenography to mean almost anything. This risk has been addressed in recent research by Rachel Hann, who strives to develop a more precise understanding of the concept by redirecting the use of ‘scenography’ back to the theatre again and instead proposes ‘scenographics’ when discussing it in the expanded sense.¹¹ She explains, “Moreover, I argue that the term ‘scenographic’ is critically distinct to scenography, with the implication being that an object or event can impart a scenographic trait without necessarily being considered scenography”.¹² Focusing on the active role of place orientation, Hann interprets it as something that potentially has the power to irritate us, change or disturb how we experience and understand the world around us. She goes on to clarify that, “To grow the critical capacity of scenography within theatre, I argue that we must consider how scenographics occur beyond theatre”.¹³

I do not see these different views of scenography as contradictory, rather as a necessary and evolving process where a concept has to open up and grow to be relevant in a new era and invite new ways of thinking. Then, once a new view is established, specified, and re-defined, it allows for a more precise application. As such, I use expanded scenography in this text as a manner of thinking and consider the design of an exhibition as scenography in the expanded sense. I also apply the idea of scenographics as an analytical tool to close read my exhibition examples.

Exhibiting scent – is it even possible?

To understand olfactory art, we have to approach it differently than we do visual art. If we close our eyes and no longer rely on vision, a different set of rules applies. To experience the artwork, we would have to inhale and incorporate it in our bodies. A physical interplay occurs when the artwork becomes a part of us. As noted by Hsuan L. Hsu, olfactory art activates air as an aesthetic medium.¹⁴ This upsets the normative museum behaviour, where interaction with the artworks is forbidden and the air should remain unscented and unnoticed by visitors.

Exhibiting scent is challenging. Museums are primarily designed for a visual experience. Scent-based artworks are volatile and fit poorly into the museum norm; they are difficult to see, collect, and preserve. As pointed out by Jim Drobnick, olfactory artworks in museums face several challenges. He divides them into five categories: institutional, critical, receptive, curatorial, and sensorial.¹⁵ In this text, I employ these challenges as critical tools to analyse the olfactory aspects of the exhibitions.

The institutional challenge is about the exhibition space and the museum building being designed for a primarily visual experience. The critical challenge consists of our unfamiliarity with discussing scent theoretically and the lack of an adequate language for scent description. This implies that serious criticism of scent-based art is relatively uncommon.¹⁶ A more precise terminology for describing scents exists among professionals in the perfume industry as well as in the online perfume community where fragrances are regularly discussed and reviewed.¹⁷ However, the jargon has not yet spread outside the industry to the extent necessary for it to be useful to critics of olfactory art with the general public as the intended audience.

The receptive challenge derives from the fact that our susceptibility to various scents varies widely – from extreme sensitivity to complete anosmia (smell blindness) to certain substances. This means that odours are perceived differently, not only because preferences vary, but because the substance actually smells different from one person to another. Furthermore, perceptions of what smells good or bad and what an acceptable aroma might be are diverse – both individually and culturally. The curatorial challenge includes scent dispersion; that the smells from multiple scent-based artworks might interfere with each other. Aromas are often volatile; they may need to be replenished continuously during the exhibition period. An olfactory artwork without visual markers can be difficult to understand as a work of art by the visitor. This necessitates contextualization by tags or information to clarify the work. The sensorial challenge highlights that scent and olfactory art force museum visitors to reflect on their own reactions to smells. It is as much about an awareness of the sense of smell and the cultural and social significance of scent as about experiencing aroma from an artistic perspective.¹⁸ These five challenges can be employed as critical tools to examine a museum’s olfactory aspects, regardless of whether the exhibition in question is primarily focused on fragrance or if olfactory aspects are meant to amplify experience in a broader sense.

To explain how these challenges can be met, I analyse examples from recent exhibitions with a focus on scent. I map out the different strategies used to reposition the olfactory aspects as something communicative and possible to comprehend. Adding Banes’ taxonomy helps to show what the scents are meant to do, what their roles are as in these exhibitions, examined as scenographic events.

Scent as art historical style: how does modernism smell?

In The Art of Scent 1889–2012, first exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York 2012–2013) perfume was exhibited as artwork, and the scents themselves played the leading role. Twelve perfumes representing significant styles in perfume history were presented in an exhibition that truly focused on scent.¹⁹ The idea was to remove all visual materials normally associated with perfume, such as packaging and advertising, and exhibit nothing but the actual scent. This was accomplished by redesigning the museum space, namely by erecting extra walls with small niches containing scent dispensers. Visitors could experience the scents undisturbed by visual stimuli. Text projections on the floor complemented the olfactory experience with information about the perfumes. The curator, Chandler Burr, wanted to break with traditional patterns of museum behaviour and allow visitors to get close instead of watching from a distance.

The perfumes were divided into stylistic categories similar to those used for visual art – abstract expressionism, minimalism, and so on. Applying the art history concept of style to the art of perfume, this exhibition equates perfume compositions with artworks and traces an evolution over time; perfume history becomes part of aesthetic history, equivalent to other aesthetic arts such as music or architecture.

Creating customized scent dispensers and reshaping the entire exhibition space to be scent-focused rather than visually focused solved several challenges. The organic walls housing scent dispensers served the dual purpose of visualizing the invisible artworks and preventing odour dispersion, thus enabling multiple scents to be exhibited in a limited area.

The lack of scent-descriptive language was handled by using art history metaphors. Instead of discussing the scents by describing their ingredients, they were presented as artworks to be experienced as a whole. The traditional approach to discuss a perfume is to break it up into notes and describe it as a bouquet of scented elements. The notes are compared to comprehensible raw materials, and one then moves on to the overall impression. Burr’s method, discussing perfume in relation to stylistic periods in art history, offered a way to focus solely on the whole.

The institutional challenge, how to make room for invisible fragrance in the museum, was overcome by using emptiness as a guiding principle. Removing all visible stimuli and downplaying sight as the main sense to be used in the museum space forced visitors to use their sense of smell and to interact with the exhibited works to experience them.

The lack of visual information brings the other senses to the fore, but this strategy also risks failing to meet the receptive challenge. The visitors might feel lost without guidance. This also connects to the critical challenge; without words to describe scent, it is hard for the visitor to fully understand the exhibited works.

Ernest Beaux: Chanel No. 5 (1921)

The Teacher’s Resource Package is a pedagogical tool developed by the Museum of Arts and Design for teachers to use in class after visiting the museum. In this material, Chanel No. 5 is presented as ‘undoubtedly an achievement of modern olfactory art’ and described as ‘the embodiment of a modern scent’ and ‘completely different from any other perfume of the time’.²⁰ Instead of discussing Chanel No. 5 as a floral aldehydic perfume composed of synthetic aldehydes mixed with rose, jasmine, and sandalwood, it is presented as a modernist work of art in the Art of Scent exhibition. Does this view of perfume as art change our perception of the scent itself? Modernism, as we know it from art history, has to do with novelty, breaking the aesthetic rules, and expressing meaning in new ways. In architecture and design, we think about geometrical shapes, light, air, function, and absence of ornamentation. How does Chanel No. 5 live up to the framework of modernism? It certainly ticks many of the boxes. The aldehydes give a sharp and angular first impression, like the olfactory equivalent of a Le Corbusier building or a cubist painting. The aldehydic first part of the impression could be interpreted as light and airy, compared to the heavily floral ladies’ perfumes that were the style of the day in 1921. But it is also a floral fragrance. After a while, the florals take over and the impression becomes deeper and smoother. It is a luxurious, rich scent, like a heavy fur coat or polished slate of marble. To my nose, there is no frilly décor disturbing the shape of the scent. So, no ornamentation – unless, of course, we consider perfume an ornament in itself. In line with Banes’ theory, this could be understood as an illustration of an era – modernism – but also as a way to evoke memories since this is such a well-known and widely used scent. Everyone visiting the exhibition might recognize it from a friend or relative who used it at some point. As an art historian, the comparison to modernism makes sense in a manner. It helps me appreciate the fragrance as a product of its time and place it in a cultural context but not to like it better. The scent is still the same, and the aesthetic reframing as a modernist work of art just helps place it in history. I might like the idea of it better and get a better understanding of its groundbreaking role in perfume history, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the scent itself.

The scents in this exhibition demand attention. Chanel No.5 framed as a modernist work of art forces us to reconsider what we know of modernism and ask ourselves how modernism smells. This is a new way to think about aesthetic styles. Using the sense of smell as guide is also a technique to break with the traditional methods to analyse art or design primarily by its visual characteristics. Even if we are not convinced that modernism smells like Chanel No.5, or indeed that it is a work of art at all, the olfactory-based strategy of the exhibition opens up for a more creative use of our noses when exploring aesthetic history.

Scent as scenographic tool: immersive displays

The exhibition Perfume: A sensory journey through contemporary scent at Somerset House, London (2017) took the view of perfume a step further, to a holistic approach where perfume was presented as material culture encompassing cultural and artistic as well as commercial values.²¹ The ten exhibited fragrances were visualized in scented scenographies where the stories conveyed by the chosen perfumes where conceptualized in ‘immersive displays’. Visitors were provided with notebooks and encouraged to give their own responses to the scents rather than work through explanations and lists of ingredients. The idea of this exhibition was to explore contemporary perfumery as something that might provoke and change the way we think about scent.

Olivia Giacobetti: En passant (2000)

En Passant is a fragrance that captures the moment when one walks past a bakery in spring and the scent of bread mixes with lilacs in the air. The fragrance creates this impression by combining an abstracted floral aspect of lilacs with sharp greenery and a dry, dusty note of flour. In the display, this scent was translated into a multisensory scenography where visitors could enter a room and at the same time step into the idea of the fragrance and experience its story. The idea of passing by was created with open windows, curtains floating in the air, and the sound of traffic from outside evoking the ambience of a cityscape. A film with moving, slightly blurred images in pastel colours projected on a flat canvas screen on the wall further gave the impression of catching a glimpse, just passing and barely noticing something. In the middle of the room was a wooden bench with long strips of fabric tied to its backrest. These pieces of cloth were infused with the fragrance. When seated, watching the film, and feeling the breeze from behind, one would also smell the fragrance passing by, en passant (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. En Passant Immersive display, Somerset House 2017. Photo: Viveka Kjellmer

The immersive display of En Passant was constructed by scenographic elements such as the open window breaking up the border between indoors and outdoors, the bench as an invitation to sit down, signalling that the experience was meant to take time. A bench is for rest and contemplation, a place where we are allowed to sit and think. In Banes’ terminology, the perfume worked as an illustration of the story about passing by a bakery when lilacs are blooming but also served to create a nostalgic and fleeting mood of spring, much like the dreamlike imagery on the wall.

Perfume is about more than flowers and smelling pretty. Many perfumers use trace amounts of unpleasant ingredients, such as body odour, to create depth and complexity. Bodily presence has to do with presence, ‘liveness’, and authenticity – what we smell seems real to a higher extent than the odourless. Banes argues that this authenticity aspect of scent might be one of the reasons there has been a growing interest in aroma within the theatre since the turn of the century – a way to underline the liveness of a theatre event, as opposed to recorded media.²² This also means that a small amount of what we normally dislike, such as body odour, might add a reality aspect to a perfume. This is used in perfumery to create a sense of presence and is often marketed as ‘sexiness’. In Banes’ theory, this is the illustrative category where a fragrance is meant to illustrate and enhance the realness of the naked skin.

Antoine Lie: Sécrétions Magnifiques (2006)

An example of bodily presence in fragrance is Sécrétions Magnifiques. This is a perfume that questions the boundaries of ‘wearable’. Along with musks and sandalwood, Lie uses notes reminding of blood, sperm, and sweat and aims to recreate the very intimate smell of lovemaking. The curators took the story and translated it into an unmade bed with rumpled sheets. The sheet folds contained hidden fabric sachets smelling heavily of the perfume.

An unmade bed in an art museum could be read as an obvious reference to Tracey Emin’s My Bed (1998), an artwork with many similar features. Emin’s bed, lived in for days during a difficult time in her life after a separation, is an archive of pain and bodily decay – full of cigarette butts, empty alcohol bottles, soiled underwear, and used tissues. Both beds transgress the norm of intimacy and hygiene, and attack our senses with their messiness – Emin’s visually, Lie’s olfactory (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Sécrétions Magnifiques Immersive display, Somerset House 2017. Photo: Viveka Kjellmer

Let us return to the smell of Sécrétions Magnifiques, described in the beginning of this article as a scented experience in the museum space. The perfume is a complex mix of pleasant and unpleasant. There is iris and sandalwood in there, along with musks, the metallic smell of blood, and the salty and milky notes reminiscent of sweat, saliva, and semen.

According to Banes’ taxonomy, this fragrance falls into the category of scent as illustration. It mimics body odour to create realness and evoke both interest and unease. It also creates an atmosphere of intimacy and bodily closeness that can be interpreted as either attractive or repulsive. The smell of sweat and semen is an olfactory sign for bodily presence in the bed, just like the rumpled sheets are visual signs.

In this display, the curatorial challenges of scent dispersion are resolved through small, scented sachets hidden in the sheets among the folds. The scent is kept close to the bed and stays within the room rather than spreading throughout the museum. The bed in its plain, cell-like structure looks deceptively harmless from afar. Upon entering the room and approaching the bed, the scent kicks in and the display becomes forcefully immersive.

The scenographic tension in this display consists of the dialogue between the rumpled sheets that testify to past action in the bed, the scent that tells the same story, the physical experience of entering the small room dominated by the bed, and the intimacy of the situation where we transgress the boundaries between the public and the private. Adding the art historical reference to Emin’s My Bed, the display also firmly situates itself into an art historical tradition of problematizing intimacy and social restrictions.

Scent is an active agent in the immersive displays of the Perfume exhibition. The fragrances fill the museum space with their presence and the scenographic displays are both illustrations of their stories and visceral manifestations of scent as experience. Rather than interesting effects, the scents are the core focus and the interiors merely a visible comment to the main attraction – the perfumes. The exhibition could be seen as an answer to the sensorial challenge, as expressed in the catalogue, “The scents in this exhibition not only articulate current thinking around perfumery, they also allow us to consider the wider possibilities of perfume to offer different ways of thinking about the role of scent in our lives”.²³

In this exhibition, visitors were invited to write down their own reactions and perceptions of the fragrances. No explanation or interpretation of the fragrances were present in the displays, but there was a catalogue where this information could be found. By inviting visitors to follow their noses, different movement patterns were created. I noticed visitors walk slowly with closed eyes, sit and repeatedly inhale deeply, and approach the scented objects with curiosity. The olfactory focus made visitors slow down and move carefully, circle back, and really follow the scents.

Scent as olfactory art I: the invisible made real … 

But scent is more than perfume. There are other methods to use the sense of smell as a scenographic tool in immersive olfactory artworks.

Sissel Tolaas: The FEAR of Smell – The Smell of FEAR (2006–2015)

The sense of smell is entirely in focus for olfactory researcher and artist Sissel Tolaas, whose project The FEAR of Smell – The Smell of FEAR has been exhibited at several museums in recent years. Tolaas chemically analysed the sweat of people in anxiety-inducing situations and then recreated it as the smell of fear. She applied the invisible scent to the white walls of the museum. Visitors could then touch these walls and smell the olfactory portraits of terrified people.²⁴ The artwork was exhibited in 2015 as a part of the exhibition Belle Haleine at Museum Tinguely in Basel. This exhibition explored olfactory art from the early 1900s to present, including multisensory performances, olfactory installations, and place specific artworks.²⁵

So, what is the smell of fear like, and what does it do? As I did not have the opportunity to experience the exhibition in Basel in situ, I should point out that my impressions of the work come from a special issue about Sissel Tolaas, complete with scented pages infused with Tolaas’ recreated sweat from 11 different men – the smell of fear.²⁶ Fear, I find, does not have one, single smell, but several. Every man’s sweat has a unique aroma. The scents are different, from light and peppery to dark and musky. One is sharp, verging on burned wood whereas another can be more subdued, slightly sour. The scents are tangible. I can taste them in the back of my mouth and I experience a dry sensation in my palate. What they have in common is their capability of creating a sinking feeling of vague unease in my stomach. Smelling them, I have to fight the urge to back away and wash my hands. The scents are real, as if the men were standing right behind me just a moment ago and had left their scents behind. The odour provokes physical reactions in my body, and feelings of anxiety and unease are called forth in the room, like ghosts, through the sense of smell.

Tolaas’ work is about exploring scent. She chooses to confront the visitor with its negative qualities and forces us to reflect on how we perceive scent as a taboo or a restriction. She states, “Nothing stinks, only thinking makes it so”.²⁷ The smell of sweat mimics reality in this artwork. It illustrates the concept of fear through the visitors’ embodied experience. The scent might evoke memories of one’s own fear but also, perhaps, of sensing it in others. Fear, as an invisible sentiment, becomes real and present when we inhale it. According to Banes’ taxonomy, the smell of sweat in Tolaas’ installation belongs in several categories: it is an aroma that illustrates the concept of fear, an aroma that creates a mood of unpleasantness, and also an aroma that evokes memories of anxiety. The installation builds on the sensorial challenge and forces the visitor to smell, feel, and reflect upon the smell of sweat itself, but more importantly on the feelings evoked by the smell and what they mean. In Tolaas’ work, the smell of sweat enters our bodies and makes us feel disgusted or just slightly ill at ease. It affects us and might change our mood or raise questions. This is scented scenographics at play.

Scent as olfactory art II: … or the visible made authentic

To show that olfactive aspects might be vital also in visual works of art, I will compare these impressions to another scented artwork, a recent example from Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) 2019.²⁸

GIBCA 2019, Part of the Labyrinth, is a thematic exploration of entanglement as a means to understand the world, as opposed to dividing it into binary oppositions or according to the ‘one-way growth-oriented model that has become normative in the era of modernity and industrialized capitalism’, as expressed by curator Lisa Rosendahl.²⁹ The biennial seeks to problematize entanglement through the metaphorical labyrinth. Curator Rosendahl explains, “The labyrinth is a form for experimenting with non-linear ways of thinking, doing, and seeing”.³⁰ With that in mind, let us examine how scent fits into the labyrinth.

Sissel M. Bergh: Maadth (2019)

Entering Göteborgs Konsthall, I faintly smell burned wood. The scent is raw and unexpected in an art museum, a bit disturbing even. In the great hall, I see an intricate mess of roots standing on a cement cube. The roots are entangled with rough and unpolished stones. The smell is stronger in the great hall, and it fills the space. It radiates from the messy root system like an invisible aura. I can smell wood, dirt, tar, and earthy soil. The work visually presents the same raw character, as if a piece of unkept nature has accidently landed in the art museum. Approaching the artwork, I see that it is the root system of a tree, upside down with the trunk cut off to form a pillar or a pedestal. The root system of the tree is now its crown, albeit tangled and unkept. The roots are partly covered with tar, and the black substance leaves a shiny residue. It looks sticky, as if the smell would attach itself to my skin if I come too close. After a while, I get accustomed to the scent. It changes character and seems softer, almost cosy like a woolly blanket. The sweet scent of tar and wood wraps itself around me as I walk around in the museum and watch the other artworks, still breathing in the smoky aura of the roots (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Sissel M. Bergh, Maadth, detail, GIBCA 2019. Photo: Viveka Kjellmer

The work is called Maadth (Rotvälta/Uprooted tree) by Norwegian artist Sissel M. Bergh, and it is described simply as ‘wood sculpture, dimensions variable’ in the exhibition and the catalogue.³¹ The uprooted tree has a symbolic meaning in Sami culture, referring to Mother Earth and symbolizing the links to ancestors and history.³²

In Maadth, the scents of tar, wood, and earth serve as olfactory cues to nature. Using Banes’ terminology, the scent is creating an atmosphere of nature, making what we see – the uprooted tree – feel more authentic. The authenticity of the scent is clearly out of place inside the art museum, an example of aroma design also working as a distancing device from the venue. This double function of the scent as scenographic element points to both Sami culture and the sense of smell as something that historically does not really belong in an art museum.

Göteborgs Konsthall opened in 1923 during the Gothenburg City Jubilee exhibition, and it is a perfect example of a modernist art museum, with an impressive stone and brick building with white walls for Art with a capital A. Placing a messy and smelly piece of nature in this building creates contrasts and problematizes art and the expected artefact in such a building. This is entirely in line with the intent of GIBCA 2019, where one of the goals was to challenge the inherent values of the art institution itself and to take the dialogue (or clash) between the artwork and the venue as a thematic departure.³³ The institutional challenge becomes a tool rather than a problem in this case.

The critical challenge is not really dealt with; the olfactory aspects are not mentioned in the description of the artwork. Not mentioning the scent diminishes the written description of the artwork as a whole, in my opinion, since the fragrant aspect is such an important part of the experience. But not mentioning the scent in the catalogue or the information inside the museum does not mean that it is inoperative in any way. Treating the scent as an unintentional factor is actually a means to handle the receptive challenge, albeit in a reactive rather than proactive fashion. If the scent is intentional, it has to be planned and monitored. If the scent is an unintentional by-product of the material used (tar in this case) it is there and may, or may not, affect the room and the visitors in a fortuitous manner. Talking with the museum staff eight weeks after the opening, I learned that the scent quite noticeably had reduced over time.³⁴ This also affects the curatorial aspects of the exhibition as the smell of tar filled the entire room and affected the atmosphere and the other artworks. The only contrasting scent in the room was the smell of freshly sawed wood from a temporary plywood construction for another artwork. Plywood has a more refined, woody scent, less raw and earthy than the tar. The contrasting scents created an invisible but interesting dialogue in the air, easily missed but there nonetheless.

The sensorial challenge was addressed as a problem but not completely overcome by the unexpected clash between the fragrant tar and the art museum. The burned smell got the visitors’ attention. They talked about it, whether it was intentional or not, and how it made them feel. I noticed how visitors stopped and sniffed the air on entering the museum and then followed the scent to find out where it came from.

My analysis of Maadth shows that scented scenographics can add important values to visible artworks and that they do not necessarily have to be pointed out or explained to be effective. The unexpected olfactory agent works as a surprise and can evoke interest and invite reactions and deeper understanding.

Researching olfactory dimensions: understanding scented scenographics and its possibilities

Summarizing my results, I have found both similarities and differences in the strategies applied to scented exhibitions. Scent in the museum demands untraditional approaches to visitor behaviour and museum space. It challenges the norm, sometimes uncomfortably so, but at the same time offers something new and unexpected.

The exhibitions use different approaches to scent. One strategy proposes that perfume is an artform and makes use of existing art historical classification systems already familiar to the visitor. This strategy served to familiarize the visitor with perfume using comparisons to aesthetic history and showing similarities in style with cultural history in general. Another strategy was to present perfumes as narratives. If every perfume tells a story, the exhibition could help tell this story and visitors could experience it in the museum. The narrative approach invites the visitor to search for their own interpretation of the stories and builds on imagination and interaction with the scents. A third approach uses scent as reality marker, serving to create presence and anchor an invisible artwork in the room and in the visitors’ bodies. Scent as a tool to evoke memories is part of this strategy but also its ability to create a physical sensation, such as fear or unease. In most cases, the exhibitions were marketed as scented, making fragrance the object in focus. This served to prepare the visitors before entering the museum. They knew that they were expected to use their sense of smell. GIBCA was a different case. The scent acted as a surprise and an unexpected agent in the art museum.

The institutional challenge focuses on how to fit scent into the visually oriented museum building. On a larger scale, the concept of a scented exhibition demanded new designs of the museum space, such as temporary walls or enclosures to house the fragrant installations or displays. On a smaller scale, the actual distribution of the scents had to be solved. This was accomplished by different smell technologies to evenly diffuse smells and also keep them from evaporating too quickly. Smell technologies used were, among others, built-in scent dispensers in the wall and scented objects, such as sachets, which the visitors could pick up and smell. Other methods to incorporate scent in the exhibition included the application of a fragrant substance directly to the museum wall or onto a visible artwork.

The critical challenge, our lacking scent-descriptive language, was overcome through the offering of information and an effort to evoke discussions about scent, both in and outside of the museum. Descriptive examples in catalogues, press releases, web information, and teacher’s resource packages encouraged visitors to write down, discuss, and think about their own perceptions of the scents.

The curatorial challenge, the volatile and disappearing nature of scent, was addressed by scent technologies that contained the fragrant materials and prevented them from mixing. This sometimes resulted in weak aromas and visitors not being able to smell the aroma to its full extent. The potentially disappearing aromas have to be pitted against smell overload and fragrance chaos. Smell technologies also serve to make the invisible scent visible and possible to locate in the exhibition space.

The receptive and sensorial challenges, about sensitivity to smell and cultural perceptions of smell, were often used as a way to problematize scent in the museum. These questions were meant to evoke discussions and encourage the visitors to think about their scent preferences and taboos. In this case, the challenges could often be used as a method to activate the visitors. On a meta-level, one can observe that the mere fact that well-known art and design museums choose to highlight perfumes as works of art in major exhibitions help change the perception of perfume in particular but also the importance of scent and olfactory experience in general. The sensorial challenge is overcome just by planning a scent-based exhibition and enabling media coverage and public discussion about perfume or other scented objects in the museum. The perfume-themed exhibitions strive to position scent in a broader cultural and social perspective in one way or another, by hosting lectures and workshops on scent, by providing online information and teaching materials, and by producing catalogues. GIBCA, on the other hand, has no particular scent focus since it was not a theme of the biennial. In this context, the scented element was used as a scenographic tool in one of the artworks.

But is perfume an artform or not? This is an ongoing debate in the industry among perfumers as well as among passionate perfume buyers, bloggers, and collectors. The opposite views can be illustrated by the positions taken by the curators of these two exhibitions. Chandler Burr, curator of The Art of Scent, strongly argues the case for perfume to be considered art. He was the founder of a department for olfactory art at the MAD museum and describes his fundamental aim as ‘placing scent as an artistic medium alongside painting, sculpture, and music’ and for perfumers to be recognized as artists.³⁵ Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Perfume exhibition, prefers to discuss perfume as an object of material culture and explains, “While it is fascinating to see how perfume can sit within an artistic canon, its status as a readily-available consumer product makes it a fundamentally different proposition”.³⁶

My view on this debate is that I am less interested in the ontology of perfume – it seems clear that it can be many things, depending on the situation – and more concerned with what it does. Fragrance may or may not be art, but it certainly is an artistic tool that can be utilized to create reactions – from a personal aura, only detectable close to skin, to immersive experiences filling an entire room. Jim Drobnick points to the thought-provoking capabilities of scent and concludes, “In providing a sensorially complex encounter, olfactory artworks and exhibitions turn the museum into an animated smellscape that is pluralistic, post-media, culturally diverse, and more fully embodied”.³⁷ This, I would argue, is valid outside of the museum as well. I am not sure that we necessarily have to establish whether perfume equates art or not to understand it, but I am positive that considering its scenographic potential and effects will enable multisensory and interesting experiences both in the museum and in everyday life.

Apart from the role of fragrances as agents of style, stories, and evoking feelings and memories, they also have a multisensory role – to activate the body and the other senses. Not only the sense of smell, but when the sense of vision is downplayed, all other senses are heightened. An exhibition layout with scented focus will promote bodily interaction, touch, navigation, and interactivity. It forces us to think differently. It stimulates our imagination and invites us to react and to think.

Olfactory focus leads to a different pace; instead of scanning the room visually and then zoom in, we have to sniff it out slowly. Vision is simultaneous. We take in a room at one glance and then choose where to go. Much like language, perfume is normally sequential. It evolves over time and entails a different behaviour. The museum visitors or the ‘olfactors’, as Hsu prefers to call the visitors to a scented exhibition³⁸, are moving with the scent, guided by their noses. Visiting a scented exhibition forces us to be present in the scent, to slow down, and go where the fragrance takes us.

To conclude: scented musings and a statement

In this article, I explore the idea of scent as scenographic tool. I focus on the agency of fragrance, such as its ability to create moods and provoke reactions. Smell enhances the reality aspect of an event; what we smell often seems more real and present than the odourless – sometimes to the extent that we want to back away.

Trying to describe the qualities of fragrance in a written article, smelling only of the paper it is printed on (or nothing at all if read online) is obviously quite ironic. It also illustrates the dilemma met by art historians striving to translate their understanding of an artwork – more often than not a multisensory experience – into words. To be aware of all the senses will help us to better express this complexity. As W.J.T. Mitchell stated, “There are no visual media”.³⁹

Scent can be creative and breathtakingly beautiful. Scent can be unpleasant or repulsive. Either way, it affects us. We inhale an odour, and it becomes part of our bodies. Prepared or not, we will react to, and interact with, the fragrances we encounter.

I see fragrance as a multisensory communication tool reaching far beyond mere prettiness. Scent as a bearer of meaning is fundamentally about communicating through multiple senses, but it is also about conveying new aspects of culture by helping us to consciously perceive olfactory presence and understand the importance of scent in new ways. Scent is linked to memory and to place. Scent is a means to access our memories, both personal and cultural, and therefore an important part of our cultural heritage. We need to comprehend the scents around us, both pleasant and unpleasant. Collecting, problematizing, exhibiting, and discussing scents are important keys to this understanding. Scent demands to be taken seriously. We need to care about smell.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (CCHS); Wilhelm and Martina Lundgren’s Science Fund, and The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg (KVVS).

Notes

1 W.J.T. Mitchell, “There Are No Visual Media”, Journal of Visual Culture, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, pp. 257–266.

2 Paul Duncum, “Visual Culture Isn’t Just Visual: Multiliteracy, Multimodality and Meaning”, Studies in Art Education, Vol. 45, No. 3, April–June 2004, pp. 252–264.

3 Laura U. Marks, The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses, Durham and London, 2000.

4 See for example: Sally Banes, “Olfactory Performances”, The Senses in Performance (eds. Sally Banes and André Lepecki), Abingdon and New York, 2007, pp. 29–37; Mary Fleischer, “Insence & decadents: Symbolist theatre’s use of scent”, The Senses in Performance (eds. Sally Banes and André Lepecki), Abingdon and New York, 2007, pp. 105–114; and Susan L. Feagin, “Olfaction and Space in the Theatre”, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vo. 58, No. 2, 2018, pp. 131–146.

5 Banes, 2007, p. 30

6 Feagin, 2018, p. 131

7 Banes, 2007.

8 Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer (eds.), Scenography Expanded, London and New York, 2017, p. 2

9 McKinney and Palmer, 2017, p. xvi

10 Sodja Lotker and Richard Gough, “On Scenography: Editorial”, Performance Research, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2013, p. 4

11 Rachel Hann, Beyond Scenography, London and New York, 2019.

12 Hann, 2019, p. 4

13 Hann, 2019, p. 18

14 Hsuan L. Hsu, “Olfactory Art, Transcorporeality, and the Museum Environment”, Resilience, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2016, p. 2

15 Jim Drobnick, “The Museum as Smellscape”, The Multisensory Museum. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory and Space (eds. Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascal-Leone), Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK, 2014, pp. 177–238.

16 Drobnick, 2014, pp. 183–187.

17 See for example Viveka Kjellmer, Doft i bild. Om bilden som kommunikatör i parfymannonsens värld, Gothenburg, 2009, pp. 23–24, 32–45; Sean Raspet, “Towards an Olfactory Language System”, Future Anterior, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2016, pp. 138–153; Claire Catterall, “Perfume: The world in a bottle”, Perfume. A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent, Somerset House, London, 2017, pp. 22–24.

18 Drobnick, 2014, pp. 188–195

19 Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), Art of Scent 1889–2012, New York, 20 November 2012–3 March 2013. Curator: Chandler Burr.

20 Art of Scent Teachers Resource Package, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, 2012, p. 26.

21 Somerset House, Perfume. A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent, 21 June–17 September, London, 2017. Curators: Claire Catterall and Lizzie Ostrom.

22 Banes, 2007, p. 35

23 Catterall, 2017, p. 28

24 Roland Wetzel and Annja Müller-Alsbach, “Introduction to and Review of the Exhibition Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art”, Museum Tinguely, Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art, Basel, 2015, pp. 13–15.

25 Museum Tinguely, Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art, 11 February–17 May, Basel, 2015. Curator: Annja Müller-Alsbach, curatorial assistant: Lisa Anette Ahlers.

26 mono.kultur, “Sissel Tolaas: Life is everywhere”, No. 23, 2010.

27 Sissel Tolaas, “Nose It”, Museum Tinguely, Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art, Basel, 2015, p. 141.

28 Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA), Part of the Labyrinth, 7 September–17 November, Göteborg 2019. Curator: Lisa Rosendahl.

29 Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA), Part of the Labyrinth, 7 September–17 November, Göteborg 2019, p. 5.

30 GIBCA, 2019, p. 10.

31 GIBCA, 2019, p. 17.

32 GIBCA, 2019, p. 17.

33 GIBCA, 2019, pp. 9–13.

34 Informal conversation with museum staff during a visit on 31 October 2019. At this point, the exhibition had been open 8 weeks, since 7 September 2019.

35 Carol Kino, “Fragrances as Art, Displayed Squirt by Squirt”, The New York Times, 15 November 2012.

36 Catterall, 2017, p. 26

37 Drobnick, 2014, p. 195

38 Hsu, 2016, p.10

39 Mitchell, 2005.