Chemical Charm, an exhibition at Silicon IVIalley artist-run space in Prilly, Switzerland ran between September 2 and October 12, 2018.
The project was an installation by Katie Lenanton, Raphaëlle Mueller and Sarah Sandler with Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen, centering around the sense of scent, surprisingly overlooked in art practice.
In the show, visitors’ bodies were implicated and engaged with pheromone scents, lighting and sound. The artists’ keen interest in the biological effects of pheromones asked questions about our lived experience:
“How to speak of something whose very existence is uncertain? Can we form a partial understanding through cumulative fragments? Organic desire responds to chemical control. Dissonance and residue overrides explanations articulated through default authoritative knowledges. Our language to express this is incomplete, so we attempt to communicate with gesturing bodies instead.”**
