Royal College of Art - Battersea, Dyson Building

The fifth lecture in this series supported by the Outset Contemporary Art Fund is by Sissel Tolaas who has dedicated her life to something we all take for granted: the sense of smell. Obsessively researching and exploring our most primal and yet unnoticed sense in all its facets, Tolaas has shared her research in many ways: from research projects with hospitals and institutions such as MIT or Harvard, to commercial projects for the likes of Adidas, Comme des Garçons and Louis Vuitton, to art exhibitions at the MoMA New York or the Third Berlin Biennial.

Having originally studied mathematics, chemical science, languages, and visual arts, Sissel Tolaas’s work concentrates on the topics of SMELL / SMELL & LANGUAGE – COMMUNICATON. Alongside collaborations with various established institutions, Tolaas conducted smell-mapping research in major cities creating olfactory maps of urban landscape and exploring the potential of smell as sources of information and narration.