Bharti Lalwani & Nicolas Roth

Speaker 1 00:00:09 Part of the way I think about knowledge production is that practitioners produce knowledge themselves. It's not just as linear as chains of transmission. It's rather that everyone that engages in producing something, especially something material, engages with one another. And by that means preserves knowledge of the process of it. Scent is also something we have a difficult time engaging with historically. How do you capture the past incen? How do you communicate this? Welcome to Knowledge in Its Producers, a limited series from the dad produced by me and a Monso. In each episode, we'll be talking to people who are at the forefront of knowledge production, typically away from traditional educational power structures. We'll be talking to people who curate, who edit, who run research centers, who write, and more My fields is Islamic studies and will be talking to people who fit into the study of Islam and the world that Islam generally touches. But that doesn't mean they'll be Muslim themselves. It just means we don't have perfect terms for describing this big intersecting world. Not yet. The goal of this podcast is to get a wide variety of people talking about different ways of accessing history, ideas, materiality, and more to uplift the people we're interviewing and to inspire you. So today we're talking to Bar Lonnie, who is a perfumer and art critic. Later in the interview we're speaking to Nicholas Roth, her collaborator on the digital exhibition, Bogie Hin, and the exhibition Explorers Historical sent in India. Speaker 1 00:01:40 Okay. So to welcome our guest to the podcast, I wanted to ask a fun question, and that is, what is your favorite tool? It can be anything. Absolutely. Anything that Speaker 2 00:01:51 You use Speaker 1 00:01:52 On a daily basis or a less daily basis that Speaker 2 00:01:55 You really enjoy using. First of all, thank you for having me here. Um, I thought about this question, um, and it was such a fun question cause um, I have two favorite knives. Um, one is from Japan and one is from France. So, um, once a week or once in two weeks, I kick them both out and I spend an hour just sharpening them, <laugh>. And I have, I have mostly kitchen utensils and kitchen tools made in Japan. So I'm really formed of, um, Japanese craft, uh, and how perfect everything is, you know, and this perfection was attained, um, centuries ago. So even the Tai scrubber that I have that is made from a bomb fiber, you can actually scrub utensil. So you can use to scrub the floor, or you can actually use it in the shower to, you know, it's soft enough on your skin as well. I mean, this design was perfected a hundred years ago, <laugh>. So it, it's just one of those precious objects meant for daily use. And I like this idea of beauty in ordinary everyday objects. Speaker 3 00:02:59 I really like that. I think that, I said this before on the podcast, I really enjoy a good pen, especially gum pens. And I, I think sometimes about how much joy it brings me to see the ink come out. And it's totally worth the fussiness at the end of the day. We're very lucky to have you because I mean, you engage in perfumery, which is something that I think people are used to sort of seem like the o brands as like purveyors of scent and luxuries kind of embedded in it. I know you had a career before perfume, and I actually think it dovetails really well with your craft. Um, given what I know about you and your many, many beautiful creative projects, I wanted you to tell us a bit about that and sort of tell us how it led into your career in perfume. Speaker 2 00:03:49 I'm never quite sure how to answer this question because I feel like I have had a series of non careers. I grew up convinced that I was gonna grow up and be an artist, you know, so I mean, at the age of six, very clear memory of making a conscious decision to, you know, looking at a set of paints and deciding, Yep, this is it. This is, this is what I do. You know, I did go to art school in London, and I think that whole process of being in an art college in London, adjusting to the way that they teach, or actually they don't teach, was really devastating in a sense, because I was very young. I was just 18 or 19, and, uh, I didn't have a point of view. So I did not know what art to make. And so three years later, I just sort of graduated with the sense that I was possibly never actually going to be an artist. Speaker 2 00:04:41 Maybe I, I had to find something else to do, or, or I had to use my creativity in, in other ways, in other avenues. And so the first job I got when I returned back to Lagos in Nigeria was for a group of companies. My first job being quite fortuitous in that sense, I was the graphic designer for a group of eight or nine companies. So that meant, uh, someone or the other in any of these nine companies needed help with developing billboards or advertisements or package designing. And I thought, Yeah, I can do that. They were also the largest manufacturers of, uh, carpets and rugs. It was my job to update all of their, uh, designs. And so I could use my creativity in any, you know, without any kind of restraint. Um, so that's where I actually took a lot of inspiration from my education, the kind of art that I had seen in London, the art that I had seen in, in all of these museums, and used that as, as the basis as the foundation for building, you know, thinking about design. Speaker 2 00:05:42 But you know, it's not on the wall, it's on the floor. You use it, you fit on it, you step on it. And so it's a kind of, you know, you have to think about design as functional design that should actually last, um, and should look timeless. So that, that was actually actually a fun career. So I did that for about six years, and then I took my savings and moved to, to do my masters in Singapore at the Sotheby's Institute. Again, when I went there, I was about maybe 27, and I thought, Well, this is it. I graduate, and then I joined an auction house. You know, that's how it's going to be, except this was one month before the Lehman Brothers crashed. So everything went perfect, and then there were no jobs and there were no options. And I kind of had to think very quickly on my feet. Speaker 2 00:06:25 So once I graduated, I decided that, you know, I could write a lot of the information at that time in Southeast Asia was offline. The internet was still a new space. There weren't enough websites, not enough online information about what was happening in parts of Indonesia, parts of China, or Vietnam, or Cambodia for that matter. And in 2008, Singapore had just had its second Bali. It was a very interesting time for me and a very interesting time to actually witness these new changes. You can kind of get a sense of the market arriving in spite of the financial crash. So, you know, in, in spite of the, the financial realities, things seemed to be on the incline. They have a new art. Indonesia had, you know, was posting several BNLs at once, and it was just this exciting time. So I evolved without the intention to, but I evolved into a, into a critic. Speaker 2 00:07:21 And what I found was that there were no independent art critics. So what that means is that, you know, um, I wasn't curating, I wasn't dealing, I wasn't, uh, selling art to collectors. I was simply serving the public. I wasn't serving any institutions. I wasn't serving any galleries, any dealers. And so my job was quite straightforward. I would write a review, publish it, hope that people read it, and it just so happened that I was the only one. So that's how I evolved into being this independent critic with a voice. So the kind of, you know, the job hunting fell to the wayside, and I didn't want a job anymore. I kinda valued my, my independence, my autonomy. So that, that was, you know, the, the other non-career that I had <laugh> Speaker 3 00:08:10 Tell us about the transition to perfumery, because in many ways people would assume that it's very, very, very different. But to me, it actually makes sense that there's a correlation because A, there's the component of craft, but b there is the aesthetic, even though I think we're used to thinking of aesthetics as visuals, there's an aesthetic to all and how things go together and how things are built. Speaker 2 00:08:39 But the end of 2017, what I realized was that the, um, the more prominence I gained, the more doors seem to be closing for me. I think that the art space has a lot of opportunities for curators and, and artists. What I mean by that is, um, residencies, right? You come, you stay a month and you curate something or the other, or you produce a work apart. I think the only opportunity for a residency I got was in 2015 when the Art Critics Association in Austria hosted me for a month. That was such an amazing opportunity. I, you know, I got a thousand euros to spend over a month, and I spent the entire thousand euros, and they were just shocked. Where did all that money go? And I said, Well, I toured the entire, you know, I went all over Austria, I saw all of your institutions. Speaker 2 00:09:28 I used that money and I invested it back into your country. You know, that space was absolutely breathtaking, even politically. It was also at the height of the Greek financial crisis. And, you know, refugees were beginning to come into Austria. Uh, I remember hearing about a train coming in with refugees, and they were simply stopping over switching trains and heading onto Berlin. And, um, I just thought this, this is, this is extraordinary because what, what are the Austrians themselves, you know, how, how did they see this whole situation? And so I had a lot of conversations that went beyond the bounds of contemporary art. So that was the only opportunity I got. And I just got so exhausted by 2017 that I thought, you know, I'm, I think I, I think I'm down here <laugh> in the field of art. I'd like to exit and find a new horizon where I could actually use my creativity in a different way, in a way that was new and exciting and challenging for me. Speaker 2 00:10:27 And so I began to think a lot about flavor. So a lot of, you know, I mean, there's this whole aura of mystery around perfumers, and I don't understand why. Maybe it's because they're all locked into these conglomerates and they have NDAs, right? Nondisclosure a agreements, so they can never talk about their work. So they're, they're essentially chemists. And what they do that, what they actually have to do is just build a database of formula. So what kind of ascent can go into perfume? What kind of ascent can go into your toothpaste? What kind of can go into your laundry detention? Really mundane things. It's not, it's not a glamorous profession. And so my kind of foray into perfumery was not, again, not intentional. I thought about flavor a lot. So I thought about, you know, how could I experiment and just for myself and not, you know, not thinking about it in terms of, you know, how this is going to be a product or, you know, how, how am I going to fund this whole new career or look for a job? Speaker 2 00:11:23 You know, just, just a space for play and exploration without any kind of pressure. Very low stakes. I, I just thought about all of the flavors that I was already familiar with and how I could, you know, think about this idea of green chiney, but as a spray that would go into my soup, a salad and just enhance my own experience. And so once I made that, I thought, this is pretty easy. I can translate this into perfu. Uh, and so I went about it. I went about creating a set of eight gourmand fragrances in the most logical manner. If you're thinking about flavors, and we are thinking about something like green chuck need, and, you know, what do you need? You need lime, you need, uh, coriander oil, cilantro leaf oil, uh, some ginger oil, black pepper, because you can't use green chilies, How to compose these things and find just the right balance. And I kinda instinctively felt that this, this comes naturally to me, or that my training in art translates quite well into this field of fragrance and flavor. So that's, that's how I began to call myself a perfumer and began to call myself a perfumer with confidence. Yeah, I don't have an imposter syndrome about it. I wanna be very clear about that. Speaker 3 00:12:34 I actually think that's really important for people to hear, because I feel that sometimes the discourse around imposter culture, it can almost, I mean, I don't think it's the intention of people by talking about their imposter syndrome to gaslight people, but I think the perfusion of that discourse and the media's obsession with it often means that, that people can have it, Especially when, you know, I think a lot of your expertise also comes from being inundated in these sense and flavors is, you have an intrinsic sense of it because you've spent so much time gaining this knowledge. I mean, I think about that with also your, it's called, is it monsoon rain? Am I getting the title right? Speaker 2 00:13:12 Um, do you mean mitty the smell of rain? Speaker 3 00:13:16 Yeah. That you have another fragrance That's Speaker 2 00:13:18 The pet the pet tour, Yeah. Speaker 3 00:13:21 Is that, you know, what that smells like because most of us have experience with rain, and then you have the experience with your own environment. Speaker 2 00:13:29 What happened was that I did a lot of research and whatever articles I came across on this whole smell of rain, you know, what has been produced in canard, they're like white journalists and also brown journalists just talking about this ancient, not even ancient, it's, it's just barely a hundred year old technique where they distill these clay pots and it produces a ture effect. So it's called midi Other, and that is written about romanticized about, you know, it's, it's, it's this kind of souvenir thing that people can buy. And, and to some extent it really is, It is the smell of rain in a bottle. And I think that that idea so magical and powerful, but as a perfumer to use it, it's quite a useless material. You have to use quite a lot of Miata in order to compose it in a way that doesn't get buried. Speaker 2 00:14:29 So it's, it's a very fleeting, faint scent, which I found utterly useless. So I thought, well, I can actually build this accord from scratch, again, going about it quite logically. Um, but it, except in this case, using gisin, this aroma chemical, which is so strong, even at 1% dilution. So you have to dilute that 1% even further, because otherwise the, the fragrance starts to smell like damp fungus, <laugh>, um, you know, clothes that have gone bad during the <laugh>. So it's, it's a very delicate material that you have to handle with some caution. So I thought about this idea for midi, but you know, it's midi, but with, you know, some kind of contemporary resonance. So it's the flower shop on the corner where there are like two bros sitting in a bucket for a day or two, so they're kind of rotting. There's also a lot of pollution in the air. Speaker 2 00:15:25 So it's, it's a mixture of all of these sensibilities. Very con it's a very contemporary fragrance. I noticed that, you know, all of, all the, um, the brown people who smelled it, connected with it immediately. And this, this, this is the scent, this is the scent of rain and thunderstorm and my grandparents' house. But beyond that, I mean, it's, it might be difficult for, you know, um, other people to connect with the ascent because they don't have a lived experience in this environment. So again, like smell is really a specific, you know, it speaks to a certain specificity of the individual, and it's fine. I mean, if you connect with it, great. If you can't connect with it, then it's fine. It's totally fine. It's, I, I like this kind of space of fragrance because it's such a judgment free zone. I thought about seasons and perfu and maybe, you know, how perfume should actually be produced by the season, the summer in mon monsoon season, I decided, you know, that those are the months that need a scent like midi, because anything else just feels too heavy on the skin, feels too oppressive on one's mood. Speaker 2 00:16:32 So, you know, to bring a bit of lightness and beauty, this, this particular smell was perfect. It's like, it's like picking the right soundtrack for the mood that you're in or the mood that you want to create. Speaker 3 00:16:43 It's funny because what, how I would term it is like you're applying your knowledge of like the smell palette, right? Like all of our palettes are attuned to different things, be they auditory, but also be they, you know, our tongues, right? Like, if you are not exposed to fermented foods very early, it may take you a moment to acclimate to them. The idea of kind a savory tea is often very strange to people, but that's something many cultures do. They boil barley, They both horn, they boil herbs in a certain way that has a certain very savory flavor. And I feel like you're doing that with, with scent as well, is you're recognizing that this is something the community identifies with. And also maybe something the community needs because it doesn't want to wear something heavy during the summer. And you're absolutely right. There's certain things that, like our seasonal, and as I'm thinking about it, my own tastes in perfume kinda reflect that. Cause I do kinda have a little wardrobe and think of it like that instead of a signature scent, which is how we're encouraged to, I think that's something the oat brands really want you to, to think of is you have your signature sent and that's it, but there's really Speaker 2 00:17:52 <laugh>. Yeah. Isn't that funny? You're, you're allowed one signature sent only <laugh>. Speaker 3 00:17:59 Well, it's because they want brand loyalty, right? They want you to buy for the rest, they customer for the rest of your life, and they build marketing on that. But there's something really lovely about trying out new things. I, I, one thing I really enjoy about what you do is that the idea of an independent perfumer is quite unique in, it's unique in the West, at least in western Europe, in North America to some extent. It's, it's unique to, it's certainly the idea I've never encountered, but I know lots of people, at least in the Arabic speaking world, who mix things to sell like reproduction of, of, uh, of, of, you know, the oats smells. You know, like you'll, you can get like a, a Chanel knockoff in downtown pretty easily, but, you know, independent perfume in India, Speaker 2 00:18:52 I have to think about how to answer that question because actually independent perfumers exist in the us E uk, even Australia. But that's more as a, as a result of materials, raw materials being available in grams. My context here is that everything is produced and exported from India. So if I reach out to any of these manufacturers, you know, some of whom do make those knockoff fragrances, you know, they'll tell me, Madam, you want, you know, how many tons? What's your requirement? And I'm like, No, I don't. Tons. And they're like, kilo, Buy a kilo. No. I'm like, No, I can't <laugh>. Speaker 2 00:19:34 Um, and so it's really difficult for me to get my hands on aroma chemicals, but the other makers in kj, they're quite open and, you know, they're happy to sell in grams, you know, and like three grams of, you know, a Shama or rose extract. So, I mean, those are expensive too, but at least it's pragmatic to a certain extent. So when I did start looking at perfumes, and I'm actually considering writing about this because there, there really isn't a guide on practical perfumery in the context of South Asia. There isn't. So how do you start? Where do you start? What do you do? What I did was that I just went to the local other Wallas, and I trained my nose with them. So, um, they would produce, they would indulge me. They would, you know, they're happy actually to entertain customers. So they were like, Madam, this is natural. Speaker 2 00:20:23 This is natural. Ooh, this is, and it's so expensive, but, you know, smell it. And of course it smells like a Barnard. I know now that those are not natural sense. So, you know, there's this kinda, um, slippery kinda a space, this liminal space between what is really natural and what is synthetic. So uth could be natural, but it could be diluted with a natural oil and still be sold as a genuine extract. But you know what, it, these shops are a great space to start because they will produce all of these wonderful perfumes, and you can train your nose on what Jasmine smell like, smells like, what rose smells like, what, uh, cuss Betty smells like. And it's, it's really a wonderful education. And, you know, those knockoff perfumes are actually pretty important because then, you know, I don't have to go to a mall or, you know, wait to travel to visit the duty free. Speaker 2 00:21:14 You stand there and then they'll tell you, Madame, this is Tom Ford, Tuscan, this is CK one, this is Chan number five. And I'm like, Oh, my, the chan is lovely. Can I have some <laugh>? And so for 200 rupees, you can get three grams of Chanel number five, which I, I find this kind of subversiveness, you know, very appealing. So what if it's branded fragrance? You can still buy it, It's still accessible. You know, you can kind of fulfill your dreams. You can access your dreams, and you can feel that kind of power that these advertisements assure you that ascent fragrance is going to provide you with <laugh>. Speaker 3 00:21:54 You know, these things are premised on you having money and exclusivity like that. And I'm really Yeah, absolutely agree with all of that. And I've learned so much now about, in this, like these few minutes about independent perfuming. I think you're really illustrating issues with supply chains as well, which I really appreciate. You just compressed so much into your answer that I'm really, Yeah, my brain is popping. Speaker 2 00:22:18 Um, I mean, I'm still a critic, right? I'm still a critic working with Fri. It's just that the medium has changed. I'm not writing essays anymore. I'm not writing reviews anymore, which don't spark joy. Instead of making these just wonderful sort of fragrant, I don't know, discussions to have with people, to connect with people in a different sense. And I, because I work on such a niche scale, I actually like getting to know who my customers are. And so it's been a thrill to find that, you know, this woman who in the states who's been buying my work for about three years has now completely switched over to my fragrance. So she doesn't want to buy commercial perfume. She wants to buy this one perfume that I make, uh, that I've been making since 2018. And it was one of the first eight perfumes that I made, and she just connects with it on some level and just, you know, doesn't wanna buy anything else. So I produce that for her, not just as a perfume, but as a soap, as a, a bath oil, a body lotion, incense as a chocolate. So she has this complete synesthesia experience of this, this one, one perfume that she likes so much. And it's the simplest formulation that I've made. Uh, it's literally just carm and fennel and whatever, and burg, full ingredients, Gofi <laugh>. Speaker 3 00:23:42 Cool. It's also, it sounds to me like that's also about a relationship, right? Like it, I mean, thinking about my perfume, what I really enjoy is how they change on my skin throughout the day. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I enjoy, they smell very different than they do in the bottle. That's also why I have so many, is I get a lot of little sample bottles or the thin 15 ml vis that you'll get in the Arabic speaking world or in Turkey. And I will try it on, and if I like the way it changes on my skin, it'll be something I continue. But if I don't, I can always switch it up. I can combine things throughout the day. And it sounds like for you, like for that customer, she enjoys the different, the different forms it can take while there's still that note of familiarity and then also just having it around her. Speaker 3 00:24:25 So, yeah. I also think, and this relates to what you just said about you being a critic, that you thought so carefully about the packaging of your craft, which again, ties into these questions of global supply chains, it ties into how we consume things. And it's something I always think about. You know, we, we all have these conversations about whether or not environmental change can really come from the individual, right? It's really a policy and that all these companies are trying to greenwash us. But to me, also, there comes a comfort in knowing that something I am consuming doesn't have microplastics in it. For example, if it's a drink or if it's XYZ thing. And that does inform some personal choices. And I do think that that comes from a very different philosophy that some people might have on these things. While you can still blame the big corporations, and I've really enjoyed how you package things, because that's something I, I always pay attention to, is sort of how makers bring things together. People are using rags to package things in a very beautiful way that kind of subverts what a rag is, and you've just taken such care with what you, what you store things in, and the makers of those things as well. And I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about that as well. Speaker 2 00:25:40 You know, what this is, this is really a question of ethics. As a critic, I was very ethical in the sense that I could not be bought, I could not be co-opted. And even if I accepted a press trip, that did not mean that the review was going to be not critical. I think about ethics, not in an abstract sense, I think about it in a pragmatic sense. So on a day to day basis, how could I be ethical? So do I wanna buy, do I wanna buy fast fashion from H lm? I don't do I wanna try and, you know, consume less I can do, I want to compost? So I've been composting for like two years now, and it's, it's just such a pleasure because I also did some research into landfills in India. My younger sister is a journalist, and some years back, she had gone to a village just two hours away from where I live. Speaker 2 00:26:35 And it was a, she, as she approached that village, it appeared like there were mountains, Like the village had mountains, but that was actually a landfill that wa that was all the garbage, uh, that had destroyed, uh, the social fabric of people living there, right? Their livelihoods completely devastated, their health devastated. And it was just the most jarring and shocking thing that I had seen, heard of. And I felt that I want to live with a kind of lightness and care. And so did I really want to become one of those, one of those brands, right, that produce so much wasteful packaging. I mean, traditional perfumery, commercial perfumery, basically, you know, you, you'd acquire a bottle, a very beautiful bottle that isn't packaged further and then envelope in and sealed in plastic. It just, that just doesn't appeal to me. So I think, I think I'm doing something completely different from commercial perfume. I think I work as an artist and a critic producing these small things. It's not, it's not perfume the way that one understands it. It's, I think it's a work of art or it's a discussion opener. Speaker 3 00:27:49 I'm really glad that you've been able to illustrate sort of how, I mean, it was the first question I asked you, but you really continue to answer how your sensibilities as a critic really inform your practice as, as an artist and as a perfumer, which I think are, you know, categories that overlap very much, almost completely. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you're also, and you, you mentioned at the top of the interview basically that you're, you, you, you, you have curated things before, and that was one of the many reasons I wanted to talk to you, is that you are currently co-curator of a wonderful online exhibition. So I wanna bring on your collaborator to speak with us a little bit, your creative partner, Nicholas, and then we'll get into the exhibition because it's something everyone can go online and enjoy, and it has a nice shop. So I wanna bring on and ask you the same question that I asked before. I know that you're a South Asianist and you're also a gardener, and I wanted to ask you what your favorite tool is. Speaker 4 00:28:53 Hi. Um, I really sort of struggled with this question a little bit because the scholar in me kind of wanted to actually say like, Oh, you know, my fanciest fountain pen, because it's a tool that I actually take care of <laugh>, uh, I only use it occasionally. It's in its little box. Like I, you know, I try to keep it pristine and safe, um, because it's valuable. So that's sort of the reflective, I think, of the sort of sedentary scholarly self image. But then on the other side, on the gardening side, uh, it was really a tie between pruners, uh, sort of hand pruners, hand clippers and, and the tr because those are my two go-to tools. I use them all the time, time I'm out in the garden, or also some professional gardening working in that as well. I have those two in a little holster, literally on my hip hip because I need them constantly. Speaker 4 00:29:43 But because of that, I just go through them. They're not, they're not sort of, they're so practical, they're so essential to the work, but they're not cherished objects. I, you know, I go to through two or three each a year because eventually they just break from use. Um, because of that, I intentionally, I don't get the cheapest ones because I, I obviously want them to last as long as possible, but I've yet not trusted myself to invest in the most high end ones, because while it would be great if those then last forever, you know, I don't trust the quality to be actually that much better. You know, that they would last years and years at the rate that I've, that I use them, Speaker 2 00:30:20 Nicholas, you units and Japanese ones, <laugh>. Speaker 4 00:30:23 See, the traditional Japanese ones are so specialized though. You, you really need, you need a larger array of them. Speaker 3 00:30:31 I mean, that's, that's a very good answer. It also sounds like my relationship with, uh, paper, uh, which is, you know, you're constantly just go, You can't buy a nice notebook. You just kinda have to go throughs of paper. I wanted to ask you guys about the exhibition that you've created. It's online. Uh, people can go check it out right now and enjoy it. Tell us what it is called and tell us what lets the inception of the exhibition Speaker 2 00:30:58 Actually barga him is the only thing that I've ever curated. It's the first thing that I've curated, and it might even be the last thing that I continue to curate in different iterations. <laugh>, well, it's, it's a project that will expand again. I mean, when I began to look as a critic into flavor and fragrance, I had actually made it a habit to browse the collection of the, Met the Smithsonian, the British Museum, just to see and marvel how much South Asian stuff they have, how much of this I will never see. Um, and so my, I fell on a particular folio in the collection of the Met, a 17th century painting of, uh, Shahan with his infants on. And it's a very popular image. A lot of historians are familiar with it, but my eye nose stung, were actually drawn to the, the margins, the frame around it. Speaker 2 00:31:54 It had two doves zipping towards one another, passing by a saffron CROs, a peach tree with little, you know, bees and butterflies and little pollinators doing the thing that they do, birds peacocks just strutting about. And I just thought I was really blown away by this kind of dynamism happening outside of the subject of the painting. It kind added another layer of meaning for me, because Dhaka does not become king. Shahan looks like he's in control of his kingdom, his physical world. He's in command of everything. He's observing a gem. Um, but he doesn't know the future. And so this kind of cosmic chaos that is happening beyond the, the, the subject into the frames was very attractive and subversive in some sense. And I immediately felt the flavor of saffron on my tongue, the, the smell of mango and peaches, and was simply transported into a dream space. Speaker 2 00:32:54 I started to kind of daydream of what, what would a pleasure garden at its height of full bloom feel like, smell like? And what is that kinda abundance like? I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not familiar with that, with that sense of abundance in nature. I grew up in a concrete jungle. Wherever I went, it was, I mean, even Singapore, when I lived there, it's quite manicure. Everything is manicured. Um, and I kind of think of myself as a weed. I have the temerity of a weed. I will grow back. I will not learn my lesson. I am disobedient. I am, uh, stubborn, you know? Um, and, and so I, I don't even think of myself as something wrist that I think of myself as this kind of weed that occupies space in a garden and will keep coming back and will not be erased. Speaker 2 00:33:46 <laugh>. I thought about how this could actually be translated into fragrance and flavor. So I translated this particular painting into a perfume called Barge Hin, and I thought, you know, it's, it's a generic enough name. It's not specific, it's a shorthand for Hindustan. It connects immediately in the, in the mind of the viewer that this is a time before colonization. This is a time of abundance and beauty and pleasure. And I thought, Oh, this is a museum show. This right here is a museum show. And it, it took me, you know, it took me three years to find the right kind of historian to partner with, because this was something very valuable that I had to share. It had to be the right context. It had to be the right anchor for these very fantastical ideas. And so I came across Nicholas's work kind of by accident on Twitter. Speaker 2 00:34:37 Twitter, I, I never actually used to use it. I used to go onto Twitter once a year. I kid you not once a year to just look and be a vo. And someone I knew had shared a thread that Nicholas had done on Mobile Garden Typology. And, and I looked at it and I thought, This is how extraordinary, you know, how extraordinary, how well do you have to know your subject to be able to compress it into one 40 characters? Do you know? I also look to see, you know, was anyone challenging him? <laugh>, I reached out to him and interviewed him extensively for my journal, which is only drop of humor. Again, that's a website that I built. I keep a journal on purpose so that I can still sort of keep my critic brain engaged and active and, you know, keep it as a space to do conduct interviews or write things that I wanted to write for myself for my pleasure. Speaker 2 00:35:28 And so this conversation with him just evolved into something very beautiful and extensive, and I thought that this could be, you know, suddenly Bargey started to look very possible. I left him with a question, my last question to him was, if you were to pick a painting to translate into fragrance, what kind of painting would you select and why he picked the most quietest image? Uh, it's not something that I would have considered. This is why I needed to, to partner with a historian, because if I had done it on my own, I would have done a Google search. I would have picked the most bombastic painting and not been able to identify any of the plants and flowers. And I would've just said, Ah, there, it's a translation <laugh>. But that is exactly what commercial perfumery does. This idea of, you know, Shelly Mar Charli Mar perfume made by Garland, right? Speaker 2 00:36:19 This is, this is exactly what he did. You know, Sha Mar Gardens in Lahore, Taj Mahara white woman in between that, that's your, you know, that's kind of like romantic idea of, of an or oriental perfume, which is highly problematic. And so I, that is exactly what I did not want to do. So a lot of commercial fragrances actually translate the idea of cities, right? So you can buy Japer in a bottle, ok, fine, but it's not something that I wanna do. I want to have a proper meaningful engagement with South Asian art history, which I had actually never looked at all of these paintings that Nicholas is now bringing out for me to look at. You know, I I didn't have the context, Nicholas, anything to add? Speaker 4 00:37:04 Uh, yeah. So when Har the first asked me that question, uh, when she first interviewed me, I picked that, that painting, because it was quiet, and it's intriguing. I find it very beautiful. And because I think it's, it's a, it's a type of genre scene that I think people don't generally associate with, with sort of preco early modern South Asian art. Because, you know, what they usually see is shown, you know, both by online publications and in, in catalogs and in the, in the tiny corners. I mean, even, you know, Bharti highlights this, this issue of the fact that's, you know, the vast majority of the, at least of the well studied, you know, South Asian artworks are now in Western collections, but they're also not on display there as a somewhat credentialed academic, You can go in and see them, like they'll, they're generally very helpful, willing to pull them out for you, but they're not on display. Speaker 4 00:37:56 You know, the MFA here in Boston, for example, was one of the first museums in the country to have a curator for South Asian art. And in large part, thanks to him, Anand Kumar Swami has a phenomenal collection of South Asian art, but they have literally one corner of one hallway dedicated to showing any of it. So at any given point, there are six paintings up out of a collection of thousands of paintings and drawings and, and so on, which is in part a technical necessity because then the works are all on paper. They can't be on display continuously the way Western works on oil or sculpture can be, But it's also a matter of not putting in the space and resources into displaying this artwork because Mo, most of the general audience doesn't know what to do with them because they're not part of general art history of public art, history, education here, or, you know, really anywhere in the world. Speaker 4 00:38:47 So I wanted to print something out that, you know, that wouldn't be as, as familiar. And yet it's representative and ha has a distinct olfactory note, like where their painter clearly highlighted a particular olfactory element, uh, in this case is a particular flower. And then when Hardy came back to me with the ideas of expanded to a larger project of let's do a series of these and actually, you know, start developing, you know, a series of, of perfumes and, and the, uh, and an exhibition around this, I chose five core paintings, you know, one of them being this original one, and then four additional ones. Similarly, along those same same lines, I I sort of had two criteria. One that they have a really sort of distinctive and, and be and interesting beautiful whole factory note that is clearly an intentional part of the painting. Speaker 4 00:39:38 So one of them is a painting of a rose garden and full bloom, which is not a rose garden in the ornamental sense, although it is highly ornamental, but like a rose plantation of roses being grown for processing. Another one is, you know, two young men sitting together on a terrorist holding very, very like beautiful and specifically rendered Briggs of fra narcissi, and with its various sort of, you know, little bowls of, of, of jasmine in between them. Another one is a scene of ladies with sparklers watching fireworks on a, on a terrace. So in all these, these, these strongly centered elements that are coolly part of the, part of the arti artistic intention, that was the first criteria. And the other one was that each is not a standalone painting, but is representative of a alpha genre scene that was reproduced in 17th and 18th century South Asia again and again, because this is also something that is distinctive of the, the artistic culture of precolonial North India that I really wanted to, to highlight because it never, like none of the museum of this place, not even the, the art history books on the subject tend to really bring it out, is the fact that this is a culture where these scenes repeat again and again. Speaker 4 00:40:55 And that's not a flaw, that's not a lack of creativity that's intentional and built in, both in the, in the way artists were trained, but also in the way that aesthetic ideals were sort of, you know, shared across the region and traveled and in the way that artwork was actually made accessible. I mean, one of the things that it really speaks to it we have no real handle yet, you know, as historians and scholars, is the fact that a lot of these motifs, a lot of these designs were clearly very widely familiar because artists across huge distances within the subcontinent and within short time periods, produced clear, like copies or responses to each other, which means that they were, that even though most of these works are relatively small, and there were no museums or pop or printed publications, uh, except for imported European ones, co surprisingly large number of people were somehow able to see this artwork and circulated. So each painting represents one of these, uh, these sort of genres, and this rep presented with a cluster of variations on the same theme to sort of contextualize it. Speaker 3 00:42:02 I've really enjoyed how both of you have kind of teased out. I mean, one of the themes of this podcast is accessibility, in addition to the fact that people who produce knowledge aren't necessarily tenure track academics. Something else I think about a lot of the times is that things that are quote unquote open access, that means that they're available online through museum catalogs, you know, like digitized copies of catalogs, searchable collections on a museum site. The public doesn't necessarily know instinctively they exist, and it doesn't necessarily have that degree of social literacy that it can communicate that to the audiences who inherit this history. So I think what Nicholas, what you pointed out is, is really important as well as kind of what both of you have touched on as the importance of Ambar talks a lot about this when I was talking to her individually, the pr Madeline, to, to people who are familiar with Western literature, that that sense, and you guys have kinda flipped it, which is that sometimes by seeing a rose, you're brought to that place where you can smell a rose. Speaker 3 00:43:09 And it's something that you get a lot in portraiture. I think of, I mean, I'll bring my sort of geeky book history sites of this. When you see religious sites commemorated in a variety of different manuscripts that are very widely circulated because they're meant for the public in different ways. It's meant to, to provoke a memory sometimes, or provoke a sense of connection and love. Um, and it's the same also with the aesthetics public, uh, sculptures no, no matter where you are sort of beauty and text form, whether it's ay carved into stone is meant to solicit a reaction. It's meant to give people beauty in everyday life. So I really like how both you've sort of made this an online exhibition because a digital space, especially one that has been very well advertised in social media, Bart has been very, very generous in like tagging people. Speaker 3 00:44:03 You guys had a piece in Hyperallergic sort of highlighting the project as well. That's how I came to know of it, was I saw it and I was like, Oh, this is interesting. And my immediate response was, are they doing this in an actual museum space? Because I wondered about the problems with, because I thinky is allergic to, to certain sense too, right? You, um, I, I'm not wrong in that. I think you, you've mentioned that before and people are sensitive to things. I was like, Oh, I wonder how they're getting around this putting up sign. And then I saw it was digital and I was like, that is genius. It's absolutely genius to not so that someone who knows what the scent is, but can't necessarily touch it or be exposed to much of it, but might know what it is, can have this experience as well. Speaker 3 00:44:44 And then also the fact that so many people from around the world can experience it. I was just like, Oh, this is so exciting. And it was so much more than, and I'm gonna to, I mean, this is already very far into the interview, I can poo Google arts and culture, you know, I don't think the highest, I think they're a variable quality. And this is something that I've really enjoyed reading, because you include your research notes because you've included the process, because there's a little shop, it's just so involved versus a single page with a bunch of artwork thrown on with a bunch of labels. It's just so immersive. And then also it's a resource to direct people to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example. So again, thank you guys for your very, very good at work. I wanna know more about what I've just been talking about, which is the adaptation to the digital space and how you've worked in digital space and taking considerations for the digital space. Speaker 2 00:45:36 After I interviewed Nicholas for my journal last year, I went about testing the idea of synesthesia, but presenting that online and, you know, thinking about how would the audience, how would the reader connect with all of these things that I would be making? So I tested, uh, the synesthesia box for smoked vitu, and after that, the synesthesia box for Goli shabu, which is tube roses. So again, both of these ideas were presented through incense, through soap, through perfume, through, you know, these wonderful glass bottles that I had gotten made commission for the project Incen, you know, glass incense holders. So everything was very sort of beautifully laid out, photographed, and then described. I mean, I, I, again, I'm using my education as an artist and a critic to bring people on board, to bring them to, uh, a space where they can actually see the process, understand it. Speaker 2 00:46:41 I write very simply. I hate art, art jargon. I hate it. I load it. I actually feel that, you know, when an artist is using so much jargon, they're actually hiding the fact that they have nothing to say. So for me, it's a red flag. They want to imply to the audience that, Oh, you need to be so well read to understand my high concept. Uh, that is not true. It's just that there's, you don't get it because there's nothing to be got. I'm quite mindful about that. Again, you know, um, you know, the 18 year old me who did not have a point of view has kind of grown into the 40 year old me who's, who has a, who has maybe too much of a point of view and too much of an opinion, and I absolutely want to share that. So I totally wanna demystify this kind of aura around the profession of a perfumer. Speaker 2 00:47:32 What perfumers do anyways, they, they train their nose like an athlete, right? So every day they, they have thousands of materials and they're just smelling them repeatedly, smelling them and registering them in their brain. So it's a kind of exercise to remember what the, what the material smells like. But it's also an exercise in vigilance to know which material has gone off. So citrus, for example, count, sit on a shelf for six months. For beyond six months it goes flat. Uh, you refrigerated, and then maybe it'll last a year. But you have to throw these items out after a, making all of that information available, accessible. I am happy to answer questions. Uh, and, and so these two boxes were actually quite a success. And when I say success, I don't mean I sold a hundred boxes. I mean, I sold five, which I think is, is a very good indication of, you know, how many people actually engage with these ideas, want to engage with them. Speaker 2 00:48:29 They're all buying these things virtually, right? So there are no samples. You can't find me at the duty free at the airport or at a mall, but you can actually sample these scents. So, um, the descriptions, the images, the, the description of the process becomes absolutely crucial. So when I first approach Nicholas last year, it was just the interview and I, and I kind of left it at that. I wetted his work, I read whatever was in the public domain, whatever he had written. I, I wetted my own ideas. You know, I, I tested them out up until January of this year, and then in May, I contacted him, uh, again. And, uh, I said, I have this very small idea, very small project where you pick five paintings from the 18th, 17th, 18th century, and I translate them into perfume. And so in the month of June, the perfumes actually came together quite quickly. Speaker 2 00:49:21 And that's when I thought, okay, now this idea can actually be expanded into this museum show that I had in mind back in 2018. And, and that's when I actually revealed the extent of my ambition to Nicholas, to which he agreed to being on board. And he agreed to, you know, being a co-curator. And so we then set about our tasks, which was to figure out how we would make our process and the materials involved in the process accessible to the viewer in, in a language that was very easy to understand. You know, when I say that we made something accessible, we don't mean that we dumbed things down. It is not about that, but it is about communicating very clearly, uh, and showing them a kind of giving, giving the audience, but transparency about what we did, how we went about doing it, what our intention is, and what we want the, the audience to take from it. Speaker 2 00:50:17 So I open sourced the materials that I used, so I don't exactly describe the, the formulation ratios, but you know, every material I've used is listed on there. So, and, and it's listed in a kind of structured manner, so you understand that when I say floral, it's these elements that I've used. So, uh, if it's mask, then you know, what, what ingredients actually make up musk, What do I mean by that? If it's an animal, then I also specify that it was a synthetic, uh, not a natural mask, because I think that it's obtained via a lot of animal cruelty. So again, you know, you're talking about ethics, and I'm very careful about the materials that I use. Uh, sandal wood oil, I source it from one distiller who is the only distiller in India who produces ethical wood. And what that means is that she works directly with farmers across India, across Australia, Hawaii, uh, Caledonia, and, and <inaudible> them in a fair, in a manner that, you know, where the, where the farmers are fairly compensated. Speaker 2 00:51:22 And you know, in fact, once you start looking at perfume materials, you'll start to think about how problematic they're franken's comes from Yemen. Uh, you know, there are a whole number of materials that once you start to think about how they're extracted, you really start to see imperialism and colonialism still very much in action. So beyond that, you also start to recognize that we still live in this expanded loop of violence that has been continuing since centuries. So, I mean, these are aesthetic constructions, but you know, that kind of aesthetic and beauty hides a lot of ugliness. Speaker 4 00:52:02 Yeah. And that's particularly sort of striking with, with fragrance. James Ew, at, at usc, who's one of my, my dissertation committee members and now works more on, um, on sort of medieval history of, of liquor and IXs in India, but started his career working on, on the history of smell in India, uh, has actually written about this, how even in the ancient and medieval in India, there were already a lot of really highly valued, fragrant old fact ends were, were sort of marked, and their, their mythos was sort of built around the fact that they were, that they produced this great aesthetic beauty, but that their origins were, um, were ugly. You know, that they came from really far away from dangerous lands that they, that they were extracted from animals so that they're, you know, so in a, in a sort of nonviolent ideal of ethics, they were problematic and so on. Speaker 4 00:52:55 Like there's a, there's this duality built into them, which we are, I think are not trying to hide, but try to, to stay very clearly on one side of, in terms of what we're doing aesthetically, the other with regard to the, to the sort of digital space and sort of my experience and part has very much been the one, you know, building the website and, and so on. She's much, she's more technologically worse than I am. You know, I had very particular opinions about how the images had to be arranged and things like that, and she was very obliging, uh, and always like found great solutions. Well, one of the things for me is, is sort of how, you know, my, my experience prior to this with, with how to, to convey information and, uh, in the digital space was through social media and was primarily through Instagram and Twitter. Speaker 4 00:53:37 Right? And those two are very, and I've had very different experiences with those two ads. It's, uh, apps, it's interesting that, you know, RTI actually found me on Twitter, which similar to her generally, actually for a long, have tried not to use. The main reason I got an account was actually to keep an eye on sort of academic job market things, you know, and to not be out of the loop there. And then I, you know, and, and the, the post that she saw where I was doing a thread about sort of south, you know, early modern South Asian garden, ty apologies, sort of came out of, of the work I was doing for the Harvard Fine Arts Library, um, cataloging, digitizing images of South Asian broader Islamic artworks for the steward, Kerry Welch, Islamic and South Asian photograph collection <laugh>. And because my, my own dissertation research was in, my ongoing research is on, on garden and, and, and gardening history in South Asia. Speaker 4 00:54:29 But in many ways, Instagram for me has been a, been a much, much more productive space. It's, I sort of say that other, apart from this project, it's the only social media that's actually to some degree, been useful to me in terms of making contact and in terms of sort of, you know, finding stuff that inspires me, making somewhat useful connections and so on. And I think to a large part that is driven by how visual it is, that it really lets you hone in on who you can connect with based on what they're aesthetically interested or invested in. So in that sense, I think it's, it's uniquely useful to find sort of common ground and, and find resources, uh, both in terms of information and, and in terms of, of pot of, of potential, um, interlock interlocutors. On the flip side, you know, what the app is trying to foreground, you know, with its algorithms and in terms of, you know, being profitable is so diametrically, you know, opposed from the kind of thing, from the kind of thing we do. Speaker 4 00:55:28 So that, that, you know, when you're not posting sort of human content, when you're posting sort of more academic or, or, or aesthetic content. Uh, it's incredibly difficult to gauge what the, what the, the algorithm will actually pick up and what people will actually see and what people will respond to. I mean, to this day, one of my most interacted with posts on Instagram, and the only one I think that that doesn't have me or, or you know, another person in it, is a picture of a pile of fresh nutmeg fruits, you know, that I took a few years ago in Panang and in Malaysia. And it is cuz that I don't, that is a fruit that very few people who don't live in an area where it's grown are familiar with because people are generally familiar with the nutmeg and the mace, the two products that are made from it, neither of which you can sort of see the whole, And even mace is such a rare spice, uh, that not that many people know it, you know, and it's a pretty picture, but I could never figure out why people were so drawn to that. Speaker 4 00:56:27 But that, that sort of visual sense of wonder that this evidently elicited is something that I think we've been trying to get at, you know, with every single element of, of our online presence. Speaker 3 00:56:40 So I wanna thank you both for taking the time and spending this this hour with me. It's been an honor. I think it's been really fun to, we've just covered so much, just looking at my notes as I jot down things you guys say. So I wanna ask what's in store for your exhibition and what are your hopes for its future? What's in store for you guys? Um, where it, can we follow you guys? I'll make sure to include links. Speaker 2 00:57:04 So firstly, na, thank you so much. You've been beyond, beyond generous. Thank you. I appreciate the space that I'm given to, you know, be heard, be seen. So what's next for us, Nicholas? Speaker 4 00:57:15 What is next for us? I mean, the website continues to grow. There'll be more, more contributions from us and others going up there and in terms of text, research, commentary, resources, and then we are working on trying to get elements of the project into actual gallery spaces, you know, both of the scent and of the sort of the artwork and, um, and we're trying, you know, we're trying to find engaging and chanting ways of doing that. So it is not just, you know, images up on the wall or a little bottle of scent people to test, but again, something that is something that elicits wonder but is also like up to our intellectual standards. <laugh> something that is not a mar Speaker 2 00:57:59 <laugh>, although I would like to show the pie garden. So I Speaker 4 00:58:04 The garden, The gardens. Speaker 2 00:58:05 Yes. Gardens. Yes. God. Speaker 2 00:58:08 One of the exercises that both Nicholas and I are engaging with since the show launched is to think about how this exhibition can, can transcend the virtual space into a physical space in ways that still retains that sense of magic and wonder. And I've been thinking about, you know, um, how difficult it should have been to put together a smell exhibition virtually, but it wasn't <laugh>. And now to, to tease it out. It's actually fun and challenging in a very different way. I've been thinking about, um, how the exhibition can be compressed to sit on a shelf, how it can be expanded to occupy an acre of a garden space, how it can work as if it's reverse colonization in a sense. How, how we can go around colonizing different spaces, particularly western institutions. <laugh>, you know, the exhibition is actually quite beautiful on the surface still. Speaker 2 00:59:14 There's a lot of stillness and beauty in it, and it's, it's a very seductive presentation that does not appear to come across in a kind of threatening manner, right? Uh, so again, I'm thinking of myself as a weed and I I'm operating as a weed, right? So, uh, very slowly and surreptitiously, you know, taking over these pristine garden spaces, but they could be museum institutions and how I could, you know, kind of Trojan horse, this concept into certain museums that have, that have all our stuff, right? <laugh> and how these, these paintings, these objects of beauty that are actually lying in storage can be brought out and can find a connection with an audience. I would like to think that museums are not so conservative after post covid, but I could be entirely wrong. I mean, I've heard about the VNA having, you know, uh, going through these funding cuts. Speaker 2 01:00:19 And so I don't exactly have faith in institutions, particularly if they continue to take money from oil and gas companies. I don't think I have faith in institutions that, you know, take money that is made from the misery of people. So I do want to bring this exhibition out to universities, university libraries, library institutions that also have the collections to garden spaces and, and really think about accessibility for the public, the regular museum going public or garden visiting public. And I'm interested in thinking about what public spaces mean and how scent does not understand boundaries. Scent and smell and flavor don't understand constraints in, in the physical sense. And I'm interested in just pushing those boundaries and in just the gentlest manner possible. Speaker 1 01:01:19 Thank you again for listening and again, a big thank you to Bar and Nick visit their exhibition, Bogie Hin Online follow bart at Twitter, l i t r a h b and Nick at Nick in the garden. You can follow me at an on slash 26 and you can follow the McDon at the maddon on Twitter. The production team includes Micah Hughes. You can follow at Micah a Hughes and Malu, and most importantly, our audio editor who does our post production. Nick Guney, a big thank you to the Loose Foundation. Our music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Be sure to subscribe or follow the May down on social media for upcoming episodes and mourn may down selection of podcasts.