Augúrio.
and the smells that were not there.
2021 - ongoing

the boy ate the fruit. one sensual bite after the other.
he tore through the cantaloupe flesh.
the sound, sweet and cold, of naked flesh.
teeth sinking in. the pungent sweetness is visceral, violent.
the eyes devour it too. the wanting. the waiting. the longing.
the smells and the sounds of a savage force. 

I can smell things when they are not there. I also dream in scent – once I am awake the ghostly smell lingers for days.

My inquisitiveness of my sensorial experiences, especially those relating to olfactory phenomena, was piqued during a short stint as a psychology student in 2021. I was enrolled in a summer semester of neuroscience, and when I mentioned my ability to smell odours without stimuli, it was mostly dismissed as olfactory hallucinations - also known as phantosmia. I was then given a list of potential causes for my ‘condition’, such as seizures, brain tumours, bipolar disorder, early-onset Alzheimer’s, and other symptoms that did not apply to my condition at all. While I understand that this ‘pathologizing’ of my ability to smell things without stimuli references one truth and one way of knowing, in Brazil the line separating the spiritual from the human is paper thin. As such, some ‘hallucinatory’ experiences rather than being perceived as pathologies can be integrated as being multisensorial perceptions, thus recognised as knowledge and as a product of cultural and religious/spiritual backgrounds in addition to perceived phenomena.

The project Augúrio and the smells that were not there uses nuances of my biological being, in tandem with ways of knowing drawn from aspects of my Afro-Brazilian ancestry and hybrid cultural identity, as a vehicle to question absolutist notions of truth and rigid ways of knowing. The simple layering of the imagery insinuates that truth and knowledge are more nuanced and diverse than often-privileged Eurocentric notions. The visual fragments are redolent with sensorial inputs such as erotic touch and scent while flirting with Christian beliefs of the body as a carrier of sins.

At its core, Augúrio attempts to offer alternative composites that legitimise the often-subjugated truth and knowledge of the colonised and marginalised; a composite pungent with knowledge born in a fissure that neither colonialism nor Christianity could or can penetrate.