Arts Thread

Yidan Kim uses olfactory materials and sensations to create either intangible or tangible sensory imagery. The artist focuses on the sense of smell, which has been undervalued in the hierarchy of senses, exploring humans as sensory beings. She aims to provoke the expansion of sensory perception and cognition by emphasizing the sense of smell. She delves into the boundaries between human and non-human beings, or endeavours to shift the human-centric perspective to that of non-human entities, thereby focusing on non-material objects that exist beyond the realm of human perception.Yidan Kim studied ‘Hyang-do’(Korean), a traditional fragrance culture in East Asia, and researched olfactory cultures and olfactory object-mediators worldwide, collecting olfactory materials. Drawing on incense-making techniques and fragrance oil perfumery, she manifests olfactory imagery synesthetically through sculpture, installations, and performances.In the exhibition Human Nosework Training(2020), she visualized various everyday smells in the form of ‘smell balls’, randomly installed in space, proposing that viewers experience and train themselves to perceive smells between fragrance and odor by staying still, lying on the floor, or crawling around.