Art Matters Lecture: Olfactory Ecologies and Contemporary Art

Art Matters Lecture with Hsuan L. Hsu, Ph.D. Professor of English, University of California Davis.

Although the sense of smell has long been marginalized in the Western aesthetic tradition, contemporary artists have been experimenting with olfactory materials that act on breathers on a visceral level, entering and biochemically transforming their bodies, minds, and moods. Focusing on artwork by Peter De Cupere, Boris Raux, Anicka Yi, Renée Stout, and Tanaïs, this talk considers three ways of framing scent as a medium of environmental knowledge and intimacy: as a vehicle for communicating environmental toxicity, as an intoxicating and intimate form of human and more-than-human communication, and as a way of making public “smellscapes” more breathable and meaningful for people and communities whose olfactory experience has been attenuated by Western projects of deodorization and olfactory consumption.

Mary Craig Auditorium

Free Students and Museum Circle Members

$10 Non-Members

$15 Non-Members