Maki Ueda. Olfactory Labyrinth Ver. 4.

Finding the best spot by nose

From 4 June to 21 October 2018, Japan House São Paulo in Brazil showed Maki Ueda's Olfactory Labyrinth Ver. 4, its premiere. It was curated by Felipe Riebenboom and supported by Takasago, a Japanese flavour and scent company.

The work draws on ohanami, the Japanese custom of cherry blossom viewing. Each spring people spread mats beneath the trees, eat, talk under the blossoms. The best spot is usually claimed early.

Visitors receive one task: find the best spot for ohanami with the sense of smell. The cherry trees in the room are invisible. Walkers only know they are nearing a tree when the smell grows stronger.

It is the fourth version of the smell mazes Ueda began in 2013. Earlier versions, like Ver. 2 at Villa Rot, built the maze with walls. Ver. 4 removes them.

81 bottles, one grid, one distance

The São Paulo maze is a nine by nine grid of 81 bottles hanging from the ceiling. Each holds a fragrant oil. They hang on candle wick, which slowly draws the scent up from the bottle and releases it into the air.

The rows are 70 centimetres apart, just enough for one person. According to the artist, each bottle can be smelled within about 35 centimetres. A walker between two rows smells only the bottles beside them. To learn what the next one holds, they must step forward.

The solution is 80% ethanol to lift the scent and 20% propylene glycol to hold it. Concentrations fall in steps: 10%, 0.33%, 0.01%, and near zero. Ueda drew on the Weber Fechner law, the psychophysical principle that we perceive intensity in ratios rather than sums. So the steps are multiples, not equal intervals, so the nose can truly tell each one apart. Too close and walkers get lost; too far and the game loses its subtlety.

The smell of blossoms at night

Ueda made the cherry blossom scent herself. She describes it as soft and powdery, like blossoms giving off scent in the silence of night. Real cherry blossoms smell very faintly; many people sit beneath them all afternoon without noticing. Ueda takes that faintness as her material.

Night is a meaningful choice. By day, ohanami belongs to the eyes: pink, sunlight, crowds. At night, as sight weakens, other senses speak. Ueda's maze takes visitors into a spring night in the middle of the day.

In São Paulo, a city with a large Japanese Brazilian community, ohanami is not a foreign idea. But the work does not require knowing the custom. Everyone understands looking for a good place to sit under a tree.

What stays with Ver. 4 is how it turns a season into a map. No falling petals, no images. Only 81 bottles, wicks, and a faint powdery smell. Yet people leave feeling they have sat beneath a cherry tree.