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smell as we mature into adulthood. This is where colección olorVISUAL rescues that
capacity from oblivion and makes it a mediating element that enables us engage
with contemporary art in the collection's exhibitions and educational activities.
Essències (Essences) is the title of eleven exhibitions held between 1996 and
2006. Each of the shows since 2009 has had its own specific title, given that each
is articulated around a thesis that differentiates it from the others. Olor de… (Smell
of …) is the title of the series of exhibitions whose main thesis is the forging of
close links with the location in which each is staged.
It is thrilling to see how the people who take part in the olfactory workshops,
olfactory screenings and olfactory experiences—both children or adults—
let themselves be carried away by colección olorVISUAL, breaking out of the
straitjacket imposed by established social canons and responding to our proposals.
For example, when people are asked to describe the colour red in olfactory
terms, they may say it smells like fruit and flowers, but also blood, and on a more
visceral and emotion level associate it with love, anger, passion, sex, anxiety …
Fear smells of sulphur and metal; for most of us it has an acidic, bitter smell …
'it smells black,' people have told us. When the olfactory challenge is posed by an
artwork from the collection such as Nanna Hänninen's 2009 video piece Trying to
be a better me, we find that it smells of emotions, of a closed space, of time, but is
not associated with any colour, but other works from colección olorVISUAL prompt
an emphatic chromatic response: 'it smells of green' or 'it smells pink', even
though the colours cited are not in fact present in the work.
Art is able to awaken the senses and colección olorVISUAL awakens our
memories and recollections by means of smell. The capacity of art to evoke
sensations is not confined to visual art, of course, but we can say that the
evocation of our olfactory memory is part of the patrimony of colección
olorVISUAL. Let's let our noses lead the way!
Cristina Agàpito
Direction – conservation, colección olorVISUAL
Interplaying Sensations
Art is a world of sensorial experiences. A crossbred, hybrid universe. Hence
it is so easy to stoke a controversy, because we are talking about tastes, about
sensations. We view the same image differently depending on our artistic affinities,
our sensibility and knowledge, our readings, films and experiences. We do so
depending on the context of the image, as well. One pioneering example that
reflected on the polysemy of the image was the Kuleshov effect or Mozhukin
experiment, which revolved around the idea that an individual plane was neutral
in its intrinsic intention and only gained meaning once it was linked to a sequence
of images, that is, once it was given a context. The same face, the same word or
the same act can mean many different things thanks to this polysemic richness
we have based on a context and, of course, on who is in charge of digesting and
perceiving this message. Thus, the simple act of ‘kissing’ can be a sign of affection,
a simple greeting (a ritual interaction), a sign of betrayal (a Judas kiss), a sign of
peace, a sign of respect (a kiss on the hand), an erotic expression, a provocation,
harassment, a blessing (a kiss on the forehand), a sign of religious veneration,
subordination, a sign of compassion or even a crime.
The word synaesthesia comes from the Greek “together” and “sensation” and
was coined to name the merger of different senses. If we normally smell smells,
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