Anicka Yi. You Can Call Me F (2015).

Feminism, fermentation, and scent as resistance.

In You Can Call Me F (2015), Korean-American artist Anicka Yi creates a provocative, multisensory installation that merges science, scent, and feminist politics . Commissioned by The Kitchen (New York), the work explores how the female body, particularly its biology, has been culturally stigmatized and erased.especially through the language of hygiene, control, and invisibility.

Yi collaborated with scientists to culture bacteria collected from the bodies of 100 women in her creative and intellectual community. These microbial samples were then used to develop a unique, living scent composition , described by Yi as “the olfactory fingerprint of feminism.” Rather than masking or neutralizing bodily scent, the installation confronts the viewer with its presence.challenging the sanitized norms of both gallery spaces and gender expectations.

The scent was diffused in a minimalist white room, making the invisible intensely present. Alongside it, sculptural elements and wall texts further examined themes of identity, contamination, and the porous boundaries between self and other.

You Can Call Me F exemplifies Yi’s broader practice, which fuses art and biology to question the systems.scientific, political, aesthetic.that shape how we perceive bodies and environments. Here, scent becomes both medium and message , carrying the emotional, political, and biological weight of what it means to inhabit a female identity.