It Was a Scent to Be Remembered

Published by Columbia University Arts & Culture Beat November 2015

Artist Shezad Dawood has called us to consider the power of scent with the debut of his first conceptual fragrance, It was a Time that was a Time, and he has paired the scent to complement his apocalyptic-themed film and gallery show under the same name.

Dawood, who is based in London, has sought varied ways to challenge and illuminate his audience over the past decade. As he sees his work, it is a portal leading to a potentially transcendent experience for each audience member. “What I try to strive for in my work as an artist is almost to be an opener—to open my audience into another way of thinking and perceiving the world,” he says.

Knowing this, French curator Olivia Bransbourg proposed to Dawood the idea of creating a fragrance to complement the film as part of this year’s Crossing the Line festival. Dawood relish the idea. Once Bransbourg connected Dawood to French perfumer Nicolas Bonneville, the rest became past, present and future.

“Even the title, It was a Time that was a Time, was a kind of collapse on past and future, so when Nicolas talked about working with Ambergris, I was immediately very excited, because it seemed almost like the perfect element of past and future,” Dawood says. Both Bonneville and Dawood believed that the fragrance should be companionable with the conceptual film.

I had to see and, more importantly, smell this for myself.

As I walk toward the Pioneer Works studio in Brooklyn on a September afternoon, I was welcomed by the aroma of the diffusing fragrance. It lingered beyond the textile-draped walls and cathartic sounds of clanking metal and ghoul-like consistent moans—a strong but sweet perfume, which seemed to suggest nostalgia for a time that has yet to exist—for a time that was a time.

Once inside, I entered a small, dark room. There was a film projecting before rows of empty seats—the film directed and choreographed by Dawood.

The film, which has no spoken dialogue, depicted the survivors of an unexplained catastrophe as they struggle to survive. Sheep-clothed characters emerge from the ocean, and a tribe of women land on a beach and attempt to construct a mysterious structure, all to the accompaniment of a bleak, eerie music score.

It was a time that was a time somehow conjures the cryptic dystopian allure of the film. The fragrance is indicative of Dawood’s mission to invite his audience’s perspectives to be challenged. Its key ingredient, ambergris, is potent enough to create an initial impression, with subtle elements of sand, wood, and sea that keep the scent evolving.

The power of smell is often overlooked, yet primal. The sense of smell can invoke the faintest memories while provoking suppressed thoughts to surface all the same. This is why Dawood’s It was a time that was a time cannot be simply considered a perfume meant for beautifying. It’s conceptual formation and nature makes it much more than that—it is art.