Scent Fair: A Contemporary Art and Olfactory Exhibition
On November 2, 2025, Scent Fair Austin: Elemental was presented as a one-day pop-up exhibition at Future Front House in Austin in observance of Día de los Muertos. Developed over two years of curatorial work, the inaugural exhibition advanced scent-based and craft practices through an elemental framework—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—positioning scent as both material and memory. Bringing together artists, makers, and wellness practitioners, the exhibition foregrounded ritual, ancestral knowledge, and acts of remembrance within a contemporary art context.
Nam Joti Kaur Khalsa presented Sophia: A Tribute to Grief alongside a series of curated brooms rooted in her broom-making practice. Handcrafted brooms and organic materials function as tools of care and clearing, where sweeping becomes an act of devotion and maintenance. Paloma Mayorga presented two works: haciendo y deshaciendo / doing and undoing (2025), an olfactory installation of herb-filled fiber cocoons drawn from her plant medicine practice, and Ofrenda for the Children of Gaza, an altar composed of wax figurine dolls embedded with baby’s breath flowers. Both artists engage themes of transformation, memory, and continuity through material and ritual. Scent operates as a connective element across the exhibition, informed by The Curanderx Toolkit, where plant knowledge and ritual practices carry memory across generations. Proceeds from Mayorga’s work support land revitalization and food sovereignty efforts in Palestine through the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature.
Scents of Memory: An Invitation to Feel, facilitated by Hannah Jackson of Acquired Taste, extended the exhibition into participatory space, inviting visitors to engage scent as both personal archive and collective practice. Media and archival documentation were central to the project, with Jessie Rodriguez of WeSeeWaves filming both artists’ studio practices, presented in dialogue with the exhibition. As a one-day gathering, Scent Fair Austin functioned as a site of exchange shaped by slow looking and slow sensing.
Scent Fair Austin establishes a foundation for advancing scent-based and craft practices within contemporary art, positioning olfaction as a critical medium for cultural production and public engagement. The project will return in November 2026.
