Fellows

Untitled - Eeva-Liisa Puhakka

(c) Elisa Georgi, 2024

Eeva-Liisa Puhakka ( Finland )

Eeva-Lisa's projects during the residency time explored the body, its odours, and its decomposition, how materials circulate and transform from one material into another, how smell is bound up into structural inequality. The link between offensive odors, the body, and immorality is well established in the psyche of Western society. But nothing can be known that is not first sensed. "While philosophers dispute, hunger and love decide our fate" - but both hunger and love are chemical processes that rely on smell (Jaeger 1881). 

She also aimed to learn to write about smells. Smells have to be among the most difficult things to write about. The more descriptive the word, the greater the chance that the imagination will recreate the smell. Or, one could describe what a smell does instead of trying to give it an adjective. Repulsive, pleasing, intriguing. One could almost say that smell is emotion. However, the difficulty in describing a smell depends on which language you speak.

Eeva-Liisa holds a working grant of the Arts Promotion Center Finland.