Decolonising the Art Museum: Engaging with the Politics of Olfactory Media
In this article I examine the broader subject of decolonising the art institution, through a narrower lens which focuses on unconventional media. The case study that I use to cover this subject, is the V&A Late Night ‘Feeling Through Others’, Friday 24th February 2023, with particular focus on ‘Proximities’, Gamut Of Odours, by Ezra-Lloyd Jackson. I interviewed the curator of the event, Ronan McKenzie, and discussed ‘Proximities’ in depth with Ezra-Lloyd Jackson.
Through media exploration and wholistic sensory engagement, one can expand the expected content of the art museum in physical terms and theoretical terms, retelling historical narratives in new ways which are less didactic and more instinctive. This case study reveals how deprioritising the visual, and disrupting the hierarchy of the visual, is something which is steadily becoming more recognised by museums and galleries. It is an effective way of prioritising different types of knowledge and encouraging broader forms of engagement.
In the book, Art Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Smell and the Olfactory Arts, Larry Shiner combines research on olfaction in the sciences and humanities, navigating smell in contemporary art through a philosophical lens. Shiner discusses the ingrained prejudices to overcome, with intellectuals of Western history displaying a disdain for smell, such as Darwin and Freud, who considered it the most animalistic and therefore the ‘lowest’ of the senses. Shiner reiterates Nietzsche’s musings, which conclude that odour is a reminder that we are part of the animal kingdom, and despite how much we mask it, we continually emit and breathe in odours. Western culture has become increasingly ‘deodorised’ since the eighteenth century, with entire cities and the institutions within them, intentionally sanitised to eliminate odours. Therefore, visitors began to associate environments filled with odours with non-Western settings. Shiner gives the example of the Marrakech Medina, with narrow streets densely filled with aromas from stalls roasting meat and spices and bustling heated bodies. This tension of odour versus odourless in public spaces, and the associations which both carry, is very interesting to consider when discussing brining scent into institutional spaces.
Poster for Friday Late: Feeling Through Others (24th February 2023), curated by HOME by Ronan McKenzie.
‘Feeling Through Others’ at the V&A was an amalgamation of events curated by Ronan Mckenzie, incorporating performance art, sculpture, illustration, poetry, music, and design to achieve a multi-sensory experience exploring connectivity through combining interruption and relaxation. The artists and creative professionals involved represented the multicultural and multi-ethnic identity of London, creating an event constructed by transnational approaches. This is significant, within a museum which exhibits artworks and objects from across the world. The permanent V&A collection segregates the cultures on display into clear international categories. In contrast to the rigid museum, this method of programming was an opportunity to reflect upon the cultural exchanges which are embedded in creative practices today and how there is a clear lack of separation and limitation between ideas shared. Indeed, the whole event was a primarily a setting for exchange between people.
Despite being held within a traditional museum institution, the event was, in the manner of all Late Night events, immersive and interactive. It encompassed sound and scent installations, life-drawing classes, card games and even an open mic for poetry, creative writing, and music. This no doubt is an attempt to invite more people in, but also demonstrates that the institution’s identity is not fixed and transformed into something beyond the conventional museum. Due to the wealth of the institution, this event could be free for anyone to attend on a first-come, first- served basis. It provided a space for the exploration of a variety of creative fields, but also a space to socialise with others and discuss these cultural responses to present issues in a casual setting. Thus, the museum becomes an entity which is in flux and morphing to what is needed to remain relevant to the society it serves.
Raphael Cartoons, Victoria & Albert Museum.
‘Proximities’, Gamut Of Odours, located in The Raphael Cartoons, was a scent and soundscape installation by Ezra-Lloyd Jackson. I was fortunate enough to enter a discussion with him about his experience at the V&A, and indeed, his wider creative practice as a perfumer and artist, to deepen my understanding of how he uses olfactory notes to convey complex ideas. Lavender, commonly grown in Europe, and vetiver, a root mostly found in Haiti, were used as the two main olfactory vehicles for visitors to contemplate associations of familiarities across cultures. Walking along a trail that was illuminated within the darkened space, the visitor was taken from one side of the room to another. One either started in an area infused with lavender, reaching a mid-point of intermingling smells, and ending with vetiver filling the air, or vice-versa. To each visitor, perhaps one scent was nostalgic and familiar, whilst one was more alien, or both equally associative, but they were invited to draw upon their own interpretations stemming from the concept of ‘home’, which in essence, is anything but a location.
This concept was explored in parallel through a soundscape created by Jackson, including recordings taken from UK and Caribbean outdoor locations, vocal motifs, and strong rhythmical elements. Jackson predominantly finds the connection between sound and scent in rhythm, believing that scents can embody rhythmical qualities that can be reflected in contemporary music. Synaesthetic practices have already been greatly explored between visual art, and music, and I am very intrigued to further explore the sensory links between olfactory and audio media. Both are immersive, filling the air with their presence and remaining boundaryless and un-restricted by physical limitations of space. This challenges the rigidly defined categorisation of the rest of the art museum and its collection. They are also deeply evocative media, generating emotions and memories in the visitor without requiring imagery as a vehicle to do so, acting directly upon the subjectivity of the individual. Jackson contributes to the journey of ‘decolonising scent’, and one of the themes he explores is the ‘exotic’. This sense of ‘otherness’ should be entirely subjective and not have the problematic associative connotations that it does from past histories. ‘Exoticism’ in art and culture across Europe in the nineteenth century generated a stereotype which has remained imbedded in that term. What a European may consider ‘exotic’ is not its definition, because whiteness does not act as ‘neutral’ ground. To someone from Jamaica, for instance, lavender could smell exotic. Not only does this exhibition play with that notion, but Jackson also infuses these ideas into his perfumes.
‘I’ Perfume by Deya.
Jackson connects the arena of ‘fine art’ with that of craft, design, and the commercial sphere. His perfumes, which are sold through his business, Deya, are neither artworks in themselves, nor simply commodities. When asked if he saw his role as an artist as comparable to that of a painter, with scents in substitution for tubes of paint, he did not agree. From what I understood, the scents are not components to be cultivated into a final ‘piece’ and admired for their own beauty or value, but mediators or enablers for the visitor to be taken elsewhere and reminded of things from outside the exhibition space. Thus, scents invite the visitor to both be very present within the immersive space whilst also being taken to a memory, potentially on another continent. Jackson dimmed the lights in the room so that the visitor was not distracted by the Raphael cartoons on the wall and their visual senses. It is interesting that he wished to create a separation between the museum’s content and his work, rather than creating a direct dialogue or challenge. The subtler dialogue between what his artworks convey and the context of the pre-existing museum, can be understood by those who wish to make the connection. In addressing the decolonising of scent, within an institution founded on colonial history, one cannot help being drawn to more political afterthoughts following the initial emotionally evocative response. Beyond colonial politics, one might also question the politics of media, with Jackson shifting our prioritisation of the visual away from the Raphael Cartoons, disrupting the hierarchy of then visual. It illuminates that there are different types of knowledge that can be important, and in this space, it was the knowledge that everyone brought with them into the installation.
Within the politics of media, and deprioritising the visual, one might also consider other factors of the olfactory medium within curatorial practices. Many essential oils and base notes of smells come from producers which exploit their labourers. Many materials, such as vanilla, may also embody layers of uncomfortable histories which reflect colonial exploitation. The past can be considered when using scent as a medium, to create present dialogues with history. One should also be mindful of where certain substances are coming from, who farmed them, manufactured them, and what that might change about our understanding of them.
An article by Ben Quinn comments on the V&A’s response to a government letter in which attention is drawn to its ‘contested heritage’. The letters in response to the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, were released under the Freedom of Information Act. Dowden’s letter implied that any actions motivated by politics or activism could lead to institutions losing government funding. Amidst much controversy regarding the decolonisation of institutions, the V&A’s director, Tristram Hunt, responded to Dowden, stating that it is “impossible and ahistorical to seek to ‘decolonise’ a museum like the V&A given its foundational connection to the history of British imperialism. Instead, our responsibility is to ensure that we explain the nature of our collections, with historical rigour and accuracy, in a manner which speaks to modern, multicultural Britain and the global audience we serve in South Kensington and online.”. Hunt elaborated, explaining that despite political pressures, the V&A had not removed items of contested heritage, and listed artefacts. The V&A’s collection relies upon Britain’s history as a colonial power, but it is an unanswerable ethical question whether the artefacts should remain or be returned, and I will not attempt to answer that in this article. However, the relevance of the objects’ histories, which, for now, firmly remain within the institution’s walls, is significant. In this case, what can be done to transparently confront these uncomfortable histories and re-write the lives of the objects for educational purposes and the betterment of present and future communities? Injecting contemporary thought-provoking art and programming into the space which creates a dialogue with these uncomfortable histories, is one way of approaching this. The exhibition by Ezra-Lloyd Jackson was arguably an example of a step in the right direction.
Objects’ mobilities have been examined by Wayne Modest, who compares them to the movement of people, thus sharing an equal status of ‘migrant’, with "accidental refugee status". Even with Modest’s comparative example of slavery, a form of forced and violent migration from colonial regimes, many of those people and their offspring were still able to build a new life and home. They became a part of Europe, bringing with them with their cultural and historical multifaceted identity. Therefore, Modest questions at what point do the people who were migrants or even forced or accidental migrants, stop living under this term and become situated within a new home? With this line of thinking, what is the parallel turning point for displaced objects? Modest further describes the practice of objectification within ethnological museums. The objects become entangled within the same narrative as people, regarded as the ‘exotic other’, becoming representatives of problematic racial notions. The dehumanisation and objectification of migrants, particularly forced migrants, mirrors the reductive objectification of the objects themselves. Therefore, what is a way of challenging this dehumanisation of sensitive objects within the museum space? Arguably engaging the most human and evocative of senses, which we are not yet desensitised to within the exhibition space - sound and scent.
Korean Pavillion, Venice Biennale 2024, Foreigners Everywhere.
I visited the 2024 Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere in April. Among the pavilions which stood out to me, I was fascinated by the Korean Pavilion, ‘Odorama Cities’, by the artist Koo Jeong A, and curated by Jacob Fabricius and Seolhui Lee. Koo utilised the olfactory medium to communicate cultural ideas and memories. The exhibition is described as a ‘scent portrait’ of the Korean peninsula, sourced from around six hundred olfactory memories of both residents and visitors. These recollections, collected through a public open call, were subsequently divided into distinct categories which were developed by fourteen perfumers from around the globe into fragrances. Some of these were based on nature, some based on food, or even earthenware. The scents, dispersed from hidden diffusers, so one is guided through the pavilion by one’s nose. Koo’s intention was to reflect a rejection of boundaries and display Korea in an expanded manner without segregations. However, she has not addressed the historic significance of the associations of many of their scents and the way in which these changes when they are displaced to a new location and context. This fluidity goes beyond borders and harkens to a common future which embraces the transnational. The artist has even mentioned an interest in a “transnational pavilion” at some point in a future Biennale.
This notion reiterates that of Jackson and the V&A Late Night. In contrast to the typical rigid museum system, this method of programming as a one-off event, acted primarily as a setting for bringing people together and encouraging exchanges of ideas. I believe that scent is a powerful tool for carrying this out, due to its subjectivity, limitless physical boundaries, and ability to make one truly present in the moment – one cannot replicate smell through digital technologies and screens. Scent permeates through and around physical oppositions, removing the segregation between artworks, people and one-another; it invites one to be engaged with their surroundings, participating in the ‘performance’ of the exhibition. I have been led to question what it really means to be ‘present’. If one is taken away to a distant memory, is one still present? Or thinking of connections between the historical layers and politics of the setting? In my opinion, with attention span in our digital age rapidly reducing, engaging in a sensory or ‘performative’ way makes it easier to be present. Even if one’s mind is taken elsewhere from the direct locational space you are in, you are still presently engaged with that exhibition, what it is conveying, and responding in the intended way. One cannot get out a phone and start taking pictures of smell, which might discourage people from losing the present moment to technology or social media. Whether or not the fusion of real-life and digital experiences within the exhibition space are positive or negative, it is rare to curate a space in which the medium is less inducive to online platforms, which brings potential downsides and benefits.
