ODORAMA CITIES, Koo Jeong A, 60th La Biennale di Venezia
Albarrán Bourdais is pleased to announce that Koo Jeong A will be representing South Korea at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2024.
With the new commission ODORAMA CITIES, created especially for the Korean Pavilion, KOO delves into the nuances of our spatial encounters, investigating how we perceive and recollect spaces, with a particular emphasis on how scents, smells, and odors contribute to these memories. With the pavilion itself, KOO explores an expanded tactility.
Some of the prominent interests in KOO’s art, such as immaterialism, weightlessness, endlessness, and levitation, are keywords throughout the Korean Pavilion. They are embedded and engraved as infinity symbols directly into the new wooden floor, manifested as two floating wooden möbius-shaped sculptures and a levitating, scent-diffusing bronze figure, and last but not least symbolized in the scents that transforms the pavilion into a collection of olfactory memories.
These scent memories are a cornerstone in ODORAMA CITIES. During the summer of 2023, KOO collected them with the aim of making a scent portrait of the Korean peninsula. Through social media, advertisements, press releases, and personal one-on-one meetings, the team behind the Korean Pavilion has reached out to Koreans and non-Koreans – to anyone who has a relationship to Korea – and asked: “What is your scent memory of Korea?” This open call has generated more than 600 written statements about Korean scents. A perfumer, armed with the curated stories and keywords, took on the task of interpreting and incorporating them into the creation of 16 distinct scent experiences for the pavilion and a single commercial fragrance.
During the summer of 2023 over the course of three months, KOO JEONG A collected scent memories for ODORAMA CITIES with the aim of building a portrait of the entire Korean peninsula. After a public open call issued by KOO and the pavilion curatorial team via social media, advertisements, one-to-one meetings, Koreans, non-Koreans, and other publics with a relationship to Korea submitted descriptions in response to one central question: “What is your scent memory of Korea?”
All scent memories collected during June 25 – September 30, 2023 will be available here from April 17, 2024.
Albarrán Bourdais is pleased to announce that Koo Jeong A will be representing South Korea at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2024.
With the new commission ODORAMA CITIES, created especially for the Korean Pavilion, KOO delves into the nuances of our spatial encounters, investigating how we perceive and recollect spaces, with a particular emphasis on how scents, smells, and odors contribute to these memories. With the pavilion itself, KOO explores an expanded tactility.
Some of the prominent interests in KOO’s art, such as immaterialism, weightlessness, endlessness, and levitation, are keywords throughout the Korean Pavilion. They are embedded and engraved as infinity symbols directly into the new wooden floor, manifested as two floating wooden möbius-shaped sculptures and a levitating, scent-diffusing bronze figure, and last but not least symbolized in the scents that transforms the pavilion into a collection of olfactory memories.
These scent memories are a cornerstone in ODORAMA CITIES. During the summer of 2023, KOO collected them with the aim of making a scent portrait of the Korean peninsula. Through social media, advertisements, press releases, and personal one-on-one meetings, the team behind the Korean Pavilion has reached out to Koreans and non-Koreans – to anyone who has a relationship to Korea – and asked: “What is your scent memory of Korea?” This open call has generated more than 600 written statements about Korean scents. A perfumer, armed with the curated stories and keywords, took on the task of interpreting and incorporating them into the creation of 16 distinct scent experiences for the pavilion and a single commercial fragrance.
During the summer of 2023 over the course of three months, KOO JEONG A collected scent memories for ODORAMA CITIES with the aim of building a portrait of the entire Korean peninsula. After a public open call issued by KOO and the pavilion curatorial team via social media, advertisements, one-to-one meetings, Koreans, non-Koreans, and other publics with a relationship to Korea submitted descriptions in response to one central question: “What is your scent memory of Korea?”
All scent memories collected during June 25 – September 30, 2023 will be available here from April 17, 2024.