The Language of Smell

How do we describe a smell when we have no words for it?

In this performance, visitors were invited to pause and put a scent into words. Rather than identifying what a smell was, they were asked to describe what it felt like, what it reminded them of, or what it might belong to.

The starting point was the language of the Maniq, a small hunter-gatherer community in southern Thailand whose language contains a rich vocabulary for describing smells. While Western languages often describe a scent by referring to its source, a flower, wood, smoke or fruit, Maniq expressions can refer directly to an olfactory quality.

The performance explores the gap between smelling and speaking: What happens when we try to give an invisible sensation a name? And what might we discover about our relationship with our surroundings if we had a richer language for smell?

Perhaps we do not lack a sense of smell. We lack the words to describe it.