Between The Branches, a Couple of Steps Forward, Moscow 2021

wax sculpture, scent, text

photographer: Vasiliy Sumin
location: Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow, Russia
exhibition: “Limiting visibility” 09.06-27.06.2021

The project draws on a 15th-century travel diary describing a journey from Moscow to Rome, with particular attention to historical ideas about miasma as a source of disease.
This reference becomes a starting point for reconstructing the experience through a deliberately unstable, “messy” form, where mediation plays a central role. The work explores how smell shapes our understanding of the world.
A dense scent of moisture, mud, and mold permeates the wax sculpture and fills the exhibition space. This is contrasted by small textual fragments on the walls describing the smell of tobacco, creating a dissonance between physical sensation and its linguistic representation.
The installation constructs a situation in which the material object acquires an olfactory dimension, while also questioning how we articulate subjective and immaterial experiences.