Martynka Wawrzyniak, "Hair No. 1", 2011. Courtesy of Envoy Enterprises
Envoy Enterprises hosts a show from the young Polish photographer and video artist who shares her most intimate smells with visitors via flacons filled with the essence of her sweat, hair and tears
Smell Me is Martynka Wawrzyniak's third show at the gallery on Manhattan's Lower East Side, tracing her evolution as an artist working in photography, video and her latest, most unlikely medium: chemistry. The project is a year in the making, with Wawrzyniak enrolling as a summer student at Hunter University and working as part of a research team to capture the concentrated essences of her body. This olfactory-based work switches the focus from the visual realm of self-portraits and nudes to explore other sensory forms of experience.
In an interview with New York Times Magazine, Wawrzyniak traces her obsession with scent back to her childhood in communist Poland, recalling buses filled with smelly passengers in days when deodorant was a luxury good, and explaining, "I have incredibly vivid memories of liking certain people because of their smell and being afraid of others because of their smell". Today she complains that people mask their smells with soap and perfume, calling the mix of inorganic scents a "horrible cocktail".
"In today's society we do everything we can to mask the natural scent of our bodies", Wawrzyniak says, "thus forgoing an ancient form of animal communication. I wanted to isolate these primal human essences and deliver them in an environment devoid of other sensual distractions. The piece represents the true essence of a woman - free of visual prejudice."
The original scents have been complemented with more stable synthetic essences created in collaboration with renowned perfumer Yann Vasnier and Dawn Goldworm of the 12.29 company, in order to capture the scent for a longer period of time and intensify it further so as to fill an entire scent chamber for visitors to enter and immerse themselves. Of the 47 essential oils created, 10 will be on show at the gallery, contained in beakers. These substances vary in consistency, from a pale mist to a brown sludge, some delicate in scent such as the rainwater scent of tears, to the animal smell of a sweaty nightshirt and the peppery smell of the artist's hair.
The centrepiece of the show is a limited edition of the original organic essences, presented in glass vials, along with three candles made of paraffin scraped off Wawrzyniak's body. With names like Sweat Shirt #1, Sweat #5, Tears #8, Hair #1, they are available for sale for anyone who cares to take Wawrzyniak's essence home.
In an interview with Vice Magazine, the artist says,
It is a bit weird, I have to say. Initially, I was nervous about what I would smell like. In a way, it’s even more naked than being naked because, when you’re naked, you’re exposed, but when you’re really intimate with a person, you can smell them. But I became quite comfortable with my body smell over the course of the project. Now I’m so accepting of every smell of my body and I really quite like it, even when my T-shirt gets sweaty. I actually ended up realizing that I smell nice.
A project perhaps inspired by Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, the work exposes the artist in an usual way, while also pushing the boundaries of experiencing art by forcing visitors to inhale her smell, invading their personal space even after they've left the gallery, as particles of the scent remain on their skin and clothes afterwards.
Martynka Wawyzyniak (born in 1979) is a mixed-media artist who has worked with photography, video, performance and installations. Her recent group projects include Chocolate (2012) at Jousse Enterprise Gallery, Paris; FG.Ft (2012) at envoy enterprises, New York; Mob, 2011 at Bullet Space, New York; Commercial Break (2011), presented at The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture at the 54th Venice Biennale, Italy. She moved to New Zealand from Poland at the age of 8 and today lives in New York with her husband, the photographer Richard Kern.
Smell Me in on at the Envoy Enterprises Gallery from the 20th of October to the 18th of November 2012.
Envoy Enterprises Gallery
87 Rivington Street, New York
www.envoyenterprises.com
For more on the artist, see: www.martynka.com
Author: Agnieszka Le Nart
Thumbnail credit: Martynka Wawrzyniak’s sweat, tears and hair, as perfume. From left: "Night Shirt #1 (NS1)", "Tears #8 (T8)" and "Sweat #5 (S5)". Courtesy of the artist and Envoy Enterprises