The Stasi Smell Jar

For the exhibition If There Ever Was taking place at Reg Vardy Gallery in Sunderland, U.K., I've been composing the scent of a woman whose scent has been captured in The Stasi Smell Jar because she was a possible spy suspected by the Eastern German secret police. This exhibition consists only of the scents.

When I think about the human odor, there are two approaches. One is the realistic expressionism, and the other is the abstract expressionism, comparable to those of paintings.

The East German authority Stasi captured and stored thousands of their citizens' scents in glass jars. I consider this as the realistic expressionism, because they wanted to capture the original scent as precise as possible.

Good example of the abstract expressionism could be the perfume
"David Beckham Instinct - For Him". The fragrance does not smell at all of Beckham's sweat or whatever that could be, but of bergamot and spices just like the consumer fragrances. By wearing this, one feels like the superstar Beckham in his imagination.

My ambition for the exhibition "If There Ever Was" is to create something in between them: real, but fiction.


The most of the components are self-made.







The composed scent will be put in the scent cartridge, and it'll function as an atomizer during the exhibition. Also the scent will be printed "scratch & sniff" as a catalogue of the exhibition.