There is something in the air - catalogue

Caro Verbeek, the curator of this exhibition, has written a very poetic text about my works... Impressed.

Publisher: Hoenes-Stiftung und Dr. Stefanie Dathe, Museum Villa Rot

ISBN 978-3-9816250-5-9

Review on the exhibion of olfactory art "there is something in the air"

Review on the exhibion of olfactory art  "there is something in the air"

opening of Olfactory Labyrinth ver. 2, at Museum Villa Rot in Germany.

Navigating with the nose in Maki Ueda's smell labyrinth in villa rot.

Just finished the opening of Olfactory Labyrinth ver. 2, at Museum Villa Rot in Germany.
http://www.villa-rot.de

"The walls are inpregnated with different woody smells: Cedarwood, Olibanum, Patchouli, and Labdanum. Find the exit by folling one scent that starts from the entrance."

The audience looked enjoying being lost in the space where the scents of wood are filled.

Being in Europe, especially in this context, I cannot ignore my Japanese cultural background. If I compare my work to the other artists's, mine is very minimalistic. I'm not expressing my statement nor fascination, emotion nor manifest with my work it almost seems like.

What I am trying here is perhaps rather to make myself transparent, by giving audience freedom for experiencing and understanding. Smelling is an active and subjective action. So I provide an occasion where the audience enjoy being immersed in trance, like meditation.

In that sense my attitude (and my work) is very exotic I could say... I got even more ideas to make different labyrinth, the next step.

I was a bit bored with eating bread and ham but it made me emotional when I was leaving there. Such a wonderful and peaceful environment, staff, and the team of artists!

Thank you Stefanie and Marcel from the museum, and Caro Verbeek, the curator, and all the artists that have been giving me a lot of inspirations with the fragrant conversations 

wink絵文字

Preview of the exhibition "There is something in the air" at Museum de Rot, Germany

Preview of the exhibition "There is something in the air" at Museum Villa Rot, Germany

Olfactory Labyrinth ver. 2

Olfactory Labyrinth ver. 2

Looking great!! 

Working on perfuming scents.

At Museum de Rot, Germany

Olfactory Labyrinth ver.2

The very new work!  Premier at the Museum Rot, Germany, in March 2015.

Olfactory Labyrinth ver.2
Maki Ueda


- move, smell, and sense -

It's a small, yet life-size maze designed for playful olfactory exploration that challenges your sense of smell.  If you follow the right scent, you will manage to get out of the space.  Otherwise you will be stuck in the maze.
In recent years my key words have been "movement" and "olfactory experience". I've been researching omni-directional olfactory experiences within a certain space. The sensations created by actively walking around and finding smells are very different from just passively receiving smells.

I’ve wanted to make such life-size "olfactory labyrinth" for years. But I first experimented at low cost, resulting in this first prototype in 2013: an installation with bottles hanging from the ceiling in a grid. Each bottle contains fragrant oil. The candle rope by which it hangs from the ceiling gradually absorbs the oil and spreads the scent around the space.

The main focus is the olfactory experience rather than the scent itself. I think that smell is, in itself, neutral. It's the audience who attribute meanings such as "I dislike this smell" or "This is the smell I knew from my grandma's house" after processing olfactory information in their brains. Such meanings to smells are given from personal experiences and histories. This is why I chose not to give meanings to smells in this project.

I rather want to be open to surprising olfactory experiences that we normally wouldn’t encounter in daily life. Omni-directional olfactory experience has been forgotten in our modern life, so reviving it is especially interesting. You can become convinced that human beings, much like dogs, have the ability to sniff around and navigate themselves using their sense of smell.

I try to exclude visual and audible aspects in my works as much as possible. I let the work explain itself rather than doing so in words. Instead smells and space communicate with your physical sensations, allowing you to project images and play sounds in the mind. I believe that smell possesses such power.