Olfactory Encounters: On Scent, Memory, and Material Histories

A scent can feel familiar, comforting, odd or unsettling. It can bring back a person, a kitchen or a landscape, or carry us somewhere we have never been. Yet we rarely ask why we respond to smells as we do, or how much of that response is shaped by the world around us.

Scents carry histories of their own. Plants and aromatic materials have travelled across continents, along trade routes and through many cultures, taking on new meanings and uses along the way. Our responses are shaped by these histories, and by the places we grew up in, the people around us and the things we have learned to associate with a smell.

Olfactory Encounters invites us to centre our sense of smell and give it our full attention. Together, we will notice the memories, feelings and associations that different materials awaken, and how differently the same smell can be perceived. As we look beyond our personal relationship with smell, we will trace some of the stories these materials carry, where they have been and the meanings they have gathered along the way.

Through the making of a personal scent blend and shared reflection, we will spend time with a sense that often goes unnoticed, and ask how a closer relationship with scent might change the way we relate to one another and to our surroundings. Participants are invited to bring a plant or aromatic material of their own, such as a herb from your kitchen, dried flowers, spices or resin.

Miriam Amaryi is a scent practitioner whose work explores scent as a sensory and artistic medium. Working primarily with botanical aromatic materials, she is interested in the relationships between smell, memory, culture and the histories of the materials themselves. Through olfactory experiences, installations and collaborative practices, she explores how scent can open up new ways of connecting and engaging with ourselves, others and the world around us.