Sissel Tolaas – Smellscapes (2004–ongoing).

A map of the invisible.

Norwegian-born artist and smell researcher Sissel Tolaas has been pioneering the field of olfactory art for decades, and Smellscapes is one of her most iconic and ongoing projects. Since 2004, Tolaas has traveled to cities around the world. From Paris to Mexico City to Berlin. Collecting and chemically reconstructing their unique scent profiles. Using scent as both a tool and a language, she creates immersive olfactory maps that document the smells of specific urban areas at given points in time.

Unlike traditional cartography, Smellscapes captures what is intangible, ephemeral, and emotionally charged. The way cities feel through the nose. Her work invites viewers to navigate space through scent, shifting perception away from the visual and toward a more visceral understanding of place. Tolaas uses molecular technology and a scent archive of over 7,000 smell compounds, enabling her to reproduce everything from exhaust fumes and garbage to wet concrete, food stalls, sweat, or sea air.

Smellscapes challenges our hierarchy of the senses, elevating smell to a tool of cultural and environmental awareness. It is both a scientific and artistic investigation into memory, identity, urbanization, and sensory geography.