Smell and Air in Contemporary Art

Abstract

For this paper, I take up a thesis recently formulated by Jonathan Reinartz concerning the historical qualities of smell as a divider and identifier of communities (Historical Perspectives on Smell, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, 2013). In applying this historical thesis to contemporary art, my approach shows the strategies of artists in commenting on smell-based signifiers for social relationships and local identification. I am researching art projects that track odors which mark the smell-based differences between “the healthy us” and “the dangerous other”– particularly in the context of growing inequality in a globalized culture marked by capitalism and climate change. As case studies, I will analyze Teresa Margolles: Vaporización (2002), Sissel Tolaas: The Fear of Smell – The Smell of Fear (2006), and Michael Pinsky: Pollution Pod (2017).