“For the group show Par la fumée (By smoke), intimate memories and plural memories are anchored in the history of POUSH, the former factory of the L.T. Piver perfume house. Ghosts will whisper in our ears that fragrances are charged with intimate and collective histories, and that their breath is powerful. Primary, it is said by many religions to have animated the first soul. Collectively, it stirs up the crowds. Linking memories, heritage and emanations, some fifteen artists weave sensitive bridges between past impregnations and the aura of the present.

This is ertainly where POUSH got its start. Before it enabled artists to gain a foothold in the cultural effervescence of Paris, the site housed the former factories of L.T. Piver, a perfume house more than two centuries old (and still in business). Closed in 1976, the establishment housed up to 1,500 employees, igniting the essence of the flowers that were predominantly grown in Grasse at the time: iris, violet, jasmine, ylang-ylang. Today, the walls inhabited by visual artists are impregnated with this olfactory history. Smell remains and stains. It infuses memories. The building tells of the reuse of old stones and the thousand new lives they see unfold, but it also whispers the auratic presence of past fragrances. The walls and cobblestones breathe an air of yesteryear, an air that seeps into contemporary practice and makes the scent-laden, sensitive void a bridge between history and the present. If odors are materially non-permanent, they paradoxically enable the most vast memory we have: a contextual and intimate memory.

This memory recounts the singular experience of each and every one of us, and when it is conjugated in the plural, when one memory is combined with another, the entire history of a society comes to life. From the first, primal, essential breath that, according to most monotheistic religions, enabled a god to give life to the first human being, to the thundering, revolutionary breath that sweeps crowds away and moves mountains, all it takes is a breeze for meaning and sharing to emerge. Then, through smoke, the birth of perfume (per fumum in Latin) can be exhumed, and the spirit of the place materialized. Through smoke, the intimacy of what has been silently passed down from generation to generation can emerge to weave a shared experience, one that, as Marielle Macé envisages, translates into breathing: “Breathing is the exact and sufficient opposite of separation. So that each and every one of us feels that by the air we exhale (the air we exhale in mist, in waste, but also in gestures, in acts, and again in phrases), we are helping to produce what we call 'the air of the times'.”

- Sandra Barré, curator of the exhibition

With Io Burgard, Anna de Castro Barbosa, Clément Cogitore, Anne Commet, Morgan Courtois, Kenny Dunkan, Anaïs Gauthier, Haonan He, Éli Lotar & Jacques Prévert, Émilie McDermott, Roman Moriceau, Laure Prouvost, Antoine Renard, Adrien Tinchi, Morgane Tschiember, Ittah Yoda

Curator: Sandra Barré
Assistance with the cultural heritage inventory: Antoine Furio for the Seine-Saint-Denis Department

From October 5 to December 14, 2024
Open Fridays and Saturdays, 2pm to 7pm
Free, registration here

Discover the series of lectures devised by Sandra Barré & Alix Hugonnier as part of the exhibition

With the support of:
le19M, Grand Partner of POUSH
Corporate foundation of AG2R LA MONDIALE pour la vitalité artistique, Plaine Commune, Ville d'Aubervilliers