The Invisible World of ‘Smell Artist’ Sissel Tolaas

The Met’s hit Costume Institute show, “Sleeping Beauties” doesn’t skimp on florals. There are tulips, poppies, daisies, and of course, roses galore, rendered in multiple intricate techniques on everything from an 18th-century robe à l’anglaise to this season’s fashion fresh from the runway.

Part of the exhibition’s goals is to “reawaken” the garments (many so fragile that they can’t even be displayed on mannequins) and let visitors experience them sensorily. For instance, there are x-rays for interior views and sound components let you “hear” dresses rustling. The Berlin-based Norwegian artist and scientist Sissel Tolaas helmed the olfactory portions.

“In my work and research, I never use the term ‘scent’ or ‘fragrance,’” Tolaas said. “Smell is the only term in English that truly applies to how I think and work.” She analyzed 55 garments, 40 of which are on display. Her process entails using a microfilter to trap air and moisture in a glass tube with a pump (this process can take up to 2 hours). She then analyzes these molecules with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The smells she collated pack a wallop.

Take for instance the 1923 House of Lanvin “roseraie” silk evening dress with intricate handsewn embroidered flowers that is lying in a dimly-lit alcove. Underneath it is Tolaas’s installation, a series of clear plastic tubes that visitors can sniff (the scents permeate to some degree regardless if one leans in to inhale). If you expect tuberose, think again.

According to the wall placard, the potpourri emanating by Tolaas’s display is: “benzaldehyde: found in almonds and honey; benzothiazole: found in sulfurous food, especially meat; caprylic acid: found in oily and rancid animal products; coumarin: found in tobacco and hay; isodragol: found in fruits, plants, and high-end skin products…..tetracosane: found in toothpaste and other dental products; undecane: used as a mild sex attractant for moths and cockroaches.”

“I display my research in an art context,” said Tolaas, who has shown work at the Venice Biennale and Documenta 13, as well as at institutions like MoMA, Tate Gallery, and the Hamburger Baanhoff in Berlin. “In art, you have freedom. In science, you don’t. I work where there is life, and I work with reality.” Her mission is clear. “I’m trying to add narrative to this garment worn by people,” she said. “This garment is a legacy of time. Patina is part of history. Don’t clean everything up. We live in this world where B.O. is a no-go. By covering it and sanitizing everything away, we completely misunderstand everything.”

It was early May when I chanced upon Tolaas during the final minutes of the exhibition preview. “Smell is an abstract topic,” she said of the challenges. “I’m not putting perfumes or fragrances in bottles. I’m opening the bottles and there’s not even a bottle. How do you decontextualize invisibility? Make it accessible?” The halls of the Met were then sparsely populated, and she exuded intensity. Her hair was in her signature blonde bob, and she had on a pink blouse underneath a long jacket that looked like black lab coat.

When asked to take part in the project, she recalled saying to the curator Andrew Bolton: “I’m willing to help you to contribute to change this world. The world we look at is not the way we think it is.”

“Sleeping Beauties” is not about flowers. The exhibition uses nature as a metaphor to meditate on grander themes like the cycle of life and the inevitability of death. It also doesn’t shy away from hard truths. Tolaas was the perfect collaborator to tap. Being a historical detective is part of her job, piecing together clues from the ether.

In one part of the show is Tolaas’s high-tech “scratch-n-sniff” wallpaper based on sachets heretofore undiscovered inside three archival dresses. Nanotechnology (patented by Tolaas) imbibes the smells to walls which is triggered through touch. To the artist, these walls have “become the women’s skin.” The visitors then become part of the narrative, leaving their invisible traces.

In a botany lab-inspired room, an assortment of beakers is affixed to a wall near a vitrine of fabulous flora-inspired hats. Inside the glass vials, visitors can sniff the data Tolaas retrieved and deduce that whomever owned the fabulous Balenciaga cabbage hat chewed gum and drank whisky. Tolaas can tell very intimate stories with her molecules.

The heiress and socialite Millicent Rogers (1902-1953) has an entire room devoted to her. A wondrous Schiaperelli gown is on view. “I recorded the various parts of the body corresponding to Mrs. Rogers’s height,” Tolaas explained. “Here you have the chest, there’s the armpit, this is the waist, and so on.” She motioned at the array of tubing near the dress. “So, the smell coming out on the dress going up here, you smell them on the wall. There is a microcomputer embedded in the wall amplifying the smell molecules I found in the dress.” This made me think of Keith Richards snorting his father’s ashes. “I smelled what she was eating and how she lived,” Tolaas said. “I smell her armpit. I smelled what she was living.”

Tolaas strives to understand the person behind the objects. “What I’ve done with research and scientific process is look into the life of the person, the wearer of those garments,” she said. “What can I add to the story? In the end, smell is a very honest thing.”

As the preview was ending, I asked Tolaas how I could reach her. “I don’t have a website. You have to meet me to get to know what I do. You cannot smell over the Internet,” she said and handed me a minimalist, scented white card. It kicked like a mule. “I’m testing cognition and neuroscience,” she explained. “It’s evoking memory. I call it my brain molecule. You’ll never forget me. Whenever you pick up the card, you’re like, ‘Oh, Sissel!’”

In Germany, where she is based, Tolaas has contributed to two exhibitions currently on view. One of only three Mayan Codices in the world is displayed at the Japanese Palace in Dresden. She created a smell-enhanced memory game children play by sitting on the floor and removing tiles that utilizes the Mayan numeral system. She also analyzed ancient Elephantine papyrus for the Neues Museum in Berlin (she will be lecturing on the subject in October). “People are engaging differently with the exhibition,” she enthused, “not just walking around and looking at things, but imagining what life was like on the island!” A major undertaking, “Invisible Pompeii,” will be revealed in the fall.

“I was in the field with archeologists, anthropologists, and geologists taking part in the excavation,” she said, “collecting information from the past, in one case the stratum went down to 79 A.D.—unbelievable what I found. I’m also trying to challenge the comfort zone of the knowledge of archeology. I’m saying, ‘Listen, you are breathing while you are digging. The information that enters your nose and brain could also be collected and be part of the protocol.’”

Nature was an early passion for Tolaas, growing up in Norway and Iceland. “I grew up in a part of the world where the outdoors was indoors,” she said. “I was outside most of the day and night.” As a child, she built a science lab in the garage. She’d later study organic chemistry and linguistics. “I had an early realization,” she said. “Maybe I’m my own guinea pig. I have to convince the world to include the sense of smell for the purpose of understanding the world. My topic is life. Rethinking, recording, remembering. Wherever there is life, there is a smell molecule.”

Tolaas, who now has a database of over 20,000 smells, was inevitably approached by the commercial fragrance industry. “I could have been a millionaire, I could have done that many years ago, and led a happy-go-lucky life somewhere,” she said. “I was not interested. My ambitions were beyond that.”

She also knew she couldn’t spend her life as an anonymous cog. “I have freedom in the art world,” she said. “Life happens out there, not in the lab. I saw very early on that. I’m happy when I see people react to what my actions are. When I make people go, ‘Wow, I did not know that.’”

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