Head off
Residency - personal exhibition FRAC Centre - CHD Daumézon. Fleury-les-Aubrès, France, 2015.Mixed media: olfactory sculptures in wood and polypropylene.
The request for this residency was to connect with patients.
I attended group meetings with the psychotherapist, where patients often expressed
the desire to “get out of their head”.
The psychological unease that reigns within the hospital grounds seems to
materialize in a residual odor of medicines and musty, like an invisible and
omnipresent straitjacket.
These observations lead to the development of sculptures integrating and diffusing olfactory compositions. Their apprehension corresponds to the patients' need to get out of their head, combining the action of the body (bending, touching with the hands, lying down, nesting, dislocating, etc.) and olfaction. At the neuronal level, olfaction and memories are in immediate correlation, the memory being all the more stimulated the more it is activated in a bodily action.
The olfactory compositions respect the rules of perfumery, with the use of top, heart and base notes. The dominant notes in the composition correspond to the shape of the sculptures as well as the induced action.
The compositions find their origin both in the plants present in the park and in essential oils from the hospital pharmacopoeia. The sculptures are made from oak and beech planks from trees in the park and stored for decades in the technical rooms.
The Head Off proposal being activated by action and the olfactory sense as an in situ response to the sensitive and sensory needs of patients, the images of the installation constitute here a incomplete testimony.