Ne vous lavez pas je reviens dans sept jours is an installation of perfume papers arranged in a line on the walls all around the exhibition space. Each one is covered with one of my seven artificial smells I usually wear : my perfume, my shampoo, my detergent, my makeup remover, my moisturizer, my body oil and my deodorant. I call those artificial smell we decide to wear my « second smells ». Those smells mass produced for a wide audience can be questioned and criticized. They standardize our true smell and can be seen as identity destroyers. However, they also allow us to choose our own identity like hair color, clothes or jewelry would do.
Then should we totally condemn them ? Our smell is very powerful, we can instantly be a « madeleine de Proust » and remain forever in someone’s mind. Today, olfactory rituals are still very present. The title of the work refers to a sentence from Napoléon written to his lover Joséphine just before coming back from war, insisting on the carnal memory of his lover.
The smell matter is intangible and volatile. Imagining someone’s smell going into the viewer’s lungs offers a new dimension in space of the work. People are allowed to smell, touch or take some of those papers with them, enlarging this olfactory territory.
