Vain Glorious | Get a Whiff of This Girl
Courtesy of the artist and Envoy Enterprises, New YorkMartynka Wawrzyniak’s sweat, tears and hair, as perfume. From left: “Night Shirt #1 (NS1),” “Tears #8 (T8)” and “Sweat #5 (S5).”Who: The performance artist Martynka Wawrzyniak.
What: A new solo exhibition called “Smell Me,” at Envoy Enterprises (87 Rivington Street) opens this Saturday and runs through Nov. 18. The show is all about olfactory experience (so no sniffles, please) and features handblown chemistry vials containing Wawrzyniak’s sweat, tears and hair, as well as a scent chamber (Lady Gaga lent a scent diffuser from her recent perfume launch for the occasion!) in which visitors can inhale a synthetic compilation of Wawrzyniak’s bodily essence.
Why Bother: Martynka Wawrzyniak has been driven by her nose ever since she was a young girl growing up in Communist Poland. “I have incredibly vivid memories of liking certain people because of their smell and being afraid of others because of their smell,” she says, recalling packed bus rides filled with undeodorized passengers. “Nowadays we do everything we can to mask our own essence. We use scented soaps and shampoos and laundry powder and perfume — we all smell like a horrible cocktail.” In a quest to capture the body’s true essence, Wawrzyniak spent the last year capturing and cataloging her body’s own scents. “I wanted to create something completely visceral without any visuals — and that could only be experienced through the primary, primal senses,” she says. “It’s taking the nude self-portrait to the next level of intimacy, because I didn’t know what I would smell like.”Click here to read interview in full...
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