Karola Braga. Lágrimas, Terra e Crisântemo.

A sheet before the river

In 2022 the 13th Bienal do Mercosul took place in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. One of its venues was Armazém A6, a warehouse at Cais do Porto, the old harbour on the Guaíba River.

Facing the river, Karola Braga strung a clothesline. On it hung a white bed sheet. Nothing else. No large text, no images. Only the cloth, swaying in the wind off the water.

The sheet was soaked in a scent the artist called the smell of mourning. The title names its three parts: Lágrimas, tears. Terra, earth. Crisântemo, chrysanthemum. Each time the wind blew, the cloth moved and pushed the smell out into the space around it.

The work was commissioned by the Bienal, with support from Givaudan, a major scent and flavour company. Visitors walking along the river could smell it before they saw it.

The bed as metaphor

Braga chose a bed sheet for a reason. In her own description, the bed is a space of protection, dreams and connection. It is also a place of pain, solitude and rupture. People are born, love, fall ill and die in bed.

The work speaks of shared loss, and especially of farewells without ritual. In recent years many people could not be with their loved ones at the end, could not hold funerals as usual, could not say goodbye. That grief had nowhere to be set down.

Braga gives it a place. Not a funeral home, not a cemetery. Outdoors, on a clothesline, a spot usually kept for the plainest housework. Hanging out sheets belongs to calm days. Here it becomes a rite of farewell.

The chrysanthemum in the title is not neutral either. In many cultures it is a funeral flower, the flower of grave visits. Earth suggests burial. Tears need no explanation.

Reversing the smell of clean

Scent, words and memory are the three main threads of Karola Braga's research. She often works with names, words and the smells attached to them. In this piece the title is the formula. Read the name and you know what the smell is made of, before breathing it.

The strongest move in the work is how it reverses a familiar idea: a white sheet on the line stands for cleanliness, even sterility. Visitors approach expecting soap and sunshine. What they get is earth, funeral flowers, tears. Cleanliness does not erase grief. It only covers it.

Nor does the work require visitors to stand close. The smell travels beyond the cloth, with the wind, stronger then fainter. Some catch it while looking at the river. Some catch it after they have turned away. Like missing someone, it arrives when no one is waiting.

In 2023 the work was a finalist for the Sadakichi Award for experimental work with scent, at the 9th Art and Olfaction Awards. Braga has made other works that place scent in space, such as Sfumato with Theo Bibancos. In Porto Alegre she needed only a cloth, a line and the wind off the river.

When the Bienal ended, the sheet came down. The smell in the cloth will fade, like every smell. But those who stood before it may remember, the next time they hang a white sheet to dry.