APOTHECYCLE

Apothecycle (2025)

A mobile olfactory installation created for The Works Art & Design Festival, Edmonton

Apothecycle is a mobile scent-apothecary designed to engage publics through smell-based inquiry. The work offers unlabeled scents derived from local plant matter, soils, spices, edible materials, and other collected items. Participants may receive a limited-edition scent token as an infused and engraved takeaway object that functions as a compact record of their interaction with the installation.

Developed as part of ongoing research into sensory ecologies, field-based practices, and modes of attention, Apothecycle operates as a mobile olfactory laboratory. Materials were gathered through walks across prairie landscapes, disturbed soils, lakeshore sediments, and urban environments. The installation invites visitors to encounter scent as a form of situated knowledge rather than as a commercial product or decorative supplement.

The work positions smell as an underutilized sensory register with the capacity to convey environmental information, signal biological processes, and structure human and nonhuman relations. By presenting a range of local aromas, such as sweet clover, yarrow, mineral sands, decomposing leaves, and other site-responsive materials, Apothecycle foregrounds how scent participates in ecological communication and how olfactory perception can support place-based understanding.

As the mobile cart circulates through the festival, it distributes these olfactory samples and their associated “tokens,” creating a dispersed, temporary archive shaped by environmental conditions and public participation. Apothecycle functions as a platform for dialogue, multisensory engagement, and reflection on the role of smell within contemporary ecological art practices.