Augúrio.
and the smells that were not there.
2021 - in progress

the boy ate the fruit. one sensual bite after the other. he tore through the cantaloupe flesh. the sound, sweet and cold, of naked flesh. teeth sinking in. the pungent sweetness is visceral. the eyes devour it too. the wanting. the waiting. the longing. the smells and the sounds of a savage force. 

I can smell things where they are not there. I also dream in scent, once I am awake the smell lingers for days.

Olfactory hallucination, known as phantosmia, is a condition caused by the ability to smell odours when actual stimuli are not present. This is still a poorly understood phenomenon associated with a range of diagnosis. Some studies have shown phantosmia can be caused by neurological conditions such as head injuries, strokes, Parkinson’s disease, seizures, or brain tumours. It has also been linked to symptoms of mental disorders such as depression, bipolar or psychotic disorders. The absence of pathological, as well as psychological, symptoms in my experiences with olfactory hallucination compels my questioning of how might cultural and spiritual ways of knowing challenge a constant Western's pathologising of what and who we are.

Augúrio and the smells that were not there uses the nuances of my biological being as a vehicle to understand the crossovers and divides between pathologies, psychological and cognitive specifically, and diverse cultural contexts. With the making of this work, I begin to understand that our biological systems are fundamentally the same, and are built to perform the same tasks, human to human. However, I am also beginning to understand that the distribution of olfactory receptors in the epithelium, just as the distribution of photoreceptors in the retina, may be unique to each individual, just like fingerprints. The same way that sensations and perceptions are also distinctively experienced.