Rita Martinez x Pedro Balasso

For Contemporania International High Craftsmanship Fair in Barcelona

Since I was a child I remember my relationship with everything I encountered through the mediation of smell. I used to smell everything in a natural automatism. Since 2019 I have been looking for some archetypes of olfactory language and I have come to the first results that I wanted to gather under the name of Odorarium.

Odorarium wants to be a first approach to the universe of smells. It speaks of historical memory but, above all, personal. It speaks of hereditary concatenations, emotional feelings of crying, laughter, happiness, anguish, nostalgia.

Smells, scents, aromas that are in my cultural background, that have accompanied my life paths, created my image and contributed to the perception of myself and the others.

By Rita Martinez

Smell and feeling have always had a profound relationship. When we feel melancholically alone we seek company in the scent of the person who is not there with us.

A moment experienced is linked to a scent that affects the heart which memorizes it. Remembering the scent reverses the process and makes you travel backwards to catch that moment in your memory.

But how to physicalize a perfume, a sensation?

The composition of the perfume itself (head, heart and base) suggests the path.
The first impact with the perfume goes to the head, to the activation of the memory of the moment to move on to the load of feelings (heart) that it brings. The activation of the memory and the images that accompany it dig deeply to guarantee the continuity of the sensation that finds expression in the artistic representation of an object.

[Jewelry and Text by Rita Martínez]
[Photos by Valentina Cesta]