Sissel Tolaas sniffs where others fear to tread. ‘When other people start throwing up,’ she says, ‘that’s when I start to work.’ The self-professed scientist of smell has created cheese from David Beckham’s sweat and finds the odour of ordure far more fascinating than what she calls ‘cover-up perfumes’. But she has also recreated the scent of extinct flowers and encapsulated the life story of a Douglas fir tree in a Dinesen plank.
Though she’s long been based in Berlin, Tolaas was born on the west coast of Norway, where, she recalls, ‘we always looked west, to America’. The young Tolaas, by contrast, looked east. At 17 she left squeaky-clean Scandinavia, first for Poland and then for Russia, to study organic chemistry and linguistics. ‘I need to be somewhere I feel uncomfortable,’ she says, ‘so I had to get away from the safety of home.’ For this, she couldn’t have chosen a better time and place; she arrived just as the old Soviet Union was coming apart at the seams. ‘Everything in Russia wasso political,’ she recalls. ‘Even in church, the priests would be preaching politics, not religion.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2020-Ausgabe von Wallpaper.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2020-Ausgabe von Wallpaper.
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A Kind of Magic
Demna's breathtaking couture collection takes centre stage at Balenciaga's newly renovated couture salons in Paris
Building Site
Sun Tower, China, by Open Architecture
Circular Approach
Repurpose clothing initiative, by Oliver Spencer
CITY
Seoul's unique mix of culture, art and style goes global, thanks to an unstoppable new wave of dynamic creatives
RESTORATION KINGS
Laplace for Hauser & Wirth Paris
CARDBOARD CUTOUTS
'Box' furniture, by Max Lamb, for Gallery Fumi
URBAN BOLTHOLE
Pacaembu House, Brazil, by Arthur Casas
SURREALIST DREAMS
Weird and wonderful works to wake up to
CROWNING GLORY
15-step scalp treatment, by Eco Jardin by Park Jun
WEARABLE ART
Jewellery collection, by Lynda Benglis, for Loewe