Gayil Nalls

Gayil Nalls (born July 17, 1953)[1] is an American interdisciplinary artist and theorist living in New York City and Hudson Valley, New York. Her artistic practice originates in philosophical investigations of personal and collective sensory experiences,[2][3] memory and identity, and often include the relationship of these experiences to disappearing ecologies.[4][5][6][7] She has been a pioneer in the field of olfactory art (art that emphasizes the sense of smell),[8] and an influential contributor to the aesthetics of crowds and human massing.[9][10][11][12][13] Her multimedia work frequently unites scientific and technological approaches to art-making, exploring the boundaries between the two.[14][15]

Biography

Nalls was born July 17, 1953 in Washington, D.C.. She studied at Virginia Commonwealth University, Parsons School of Design, American University and The Corcoran College of Art and Design. In 2007, she earned her Ph.D. in the aesthetics and science of olfaction from The University of East London in the United Kingdom.[16][17] She was the Visiting Artist Professor at the Institut Superieur International Du Parfum ISIPCA, Versaille, France in 1998. Nalls currently serves as an Associate Senior Researcher at SMARTLab, and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering, University College Dublin.

Nalls’ work has been featured in thirty solo exhibitions, including six at galleries in New York City. Her work has also been included in over 100 group exhibitions.[16] Her paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, prints and olfactory sculptures can be found in the collections of institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art,[18][19] the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at George Washington University, the National Museum of American Art,[20] and the Hunter Museum of American Art, which holds four works from her iconoclastic period, and numerous other public and private collections. She has created several multimedia installation works and large-scale public commissions as well.

Work

In the 1980s, Nalls’ paintings were a pronounced iconoclastic aesthetic, controversial both philosophically and spiritually. They challenged traditional belief systems and advocated environmental wholeness—living systems—web of life thinking. In the 1982 exhibition curated by Lee Fleming, Washington Iconoclassicism", at Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC and Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL, Ms. Fleming wrote in the catalog that Nalls creates, “decidedly unpastoral visions.” Saying further that: “Placing human objects under the fierce heat of Modernism, she creates situations which pose the fragility of human effort and decoration (including art) against the forbidding façade of passing ideal.”[21]

While Nalls continues to work across several media, her artistic practice has grown progressively more conceptual over the course of her career. She is best known for her olfactory sculpture, World Sensorium'[22]', an ongoing project that premiered at the Times Square 2000 millennial celebration in New York City."[23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Following ten years of ethnobotanical research, including a world survey establishing the most culturally relevant natural scent of each nation and territory, Nalls composed World Sensorium from botanical essences blended proportionally according to each nation’s fraction in the overall world population in the year 2000.[30] For the Times Square 2000 millennial celebration, the “world scent”, as it is described by Nalls, dropped over the crowd at midnight on specially-designed, microencapsulated paperworks.[31]

Calling upon her own scientific research into the link between scent, memory, neurology, and crowd theory,[32] World Sensorium seeks to evoke a global memory and evolve a metabolic and empathetic collective in addition to the technological collective created through mass media coverage.[33]

In 2005, Nalls completed the September 11 Memorial for The City of White Plains, New York. In 2012, Nalls exhibited The Smell of a Critical Moment, a project which investigated the unique role of chemical communication within participants of Occupy Wall Street––the odors that carry information that influences human emotions, behavior and judgments, as well as our sense of beauty.[34]

Nalls continues to create numerous works that affect mood and behavior by smell or ingestion. In 2015 her olfactory art was featured in two museum exhibitions: There’s Something in the Air, at The Museum Villa Rot in Germany and The Smell of War at Kasteel de Lovie, in Belgium, and in Five Senses at Stary Browar in Poznań, Poland.

In 2016, she co-curated a public forum, exhibition and screening of her interview series Exceptional Voices at El Barrio ArtSpace in New York.[35]

She currently runs The Massing Lab, a site focused on collective behavior and protests.[36]

Publications
  • “The Politics of Perfume Objects.” For the deeper meaning - fragrance as medium in art, design and communication. Spielbein, 2016. ISBN 9783946718031
  • “POISON: Coming to Our Senses.” Paradise Paradoxe. Zurich: Edition Patrick Frey, 2016. ISBN 9783906803012
  • “The Sensuous Immortal.” Rendezvous with the Sensuous: Readings on Aesthetics. Ed. Linda Ardito, John Murungi. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 206-230. ISBN 1443856223
  • “Human Flashmobs: An Evolutionary Construct.” The Society for Social Neuroscience. Hilton Riverside Hotel, New Orleans. 2012. Poster presentation.
  • “The Importance of Natural Olfactory Stimulation on the Perception of Well-Being and Happiness.” Linking Affect to Action: Critical Contributions of the Orbitofrontal Cortex. Ed. G. Schoenbaum, J.A. Gottfried, E.A. Murray, S.J. Ramus. New York: Academy of Sciences, 2007. ISBN 1573316830
  • World Sensorium: The Theory, Practice and Significance of the World Social Olfactory Sculpture. Diss. University of East London, 2007. British Library.
  • Permutatude: Adjust to the Great Evolutionary Forces of Change or be Destroyed in the Upheavals. Philippe Staib Gallery, 1992.

Selected Articles

References
  1. U.S. Public Records Index, Vol 1 & 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010.
  2. Marchand, Anne (2010-03-20). "Marchand, Anne "Scents & Medical Sensibility", Painterly Visions Blog, March 20, 2010". Annemarchand.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  3. "Exhibition announcement, Volatile Art, curated by Andreas Keller, PhD. for the Association for Chemoreception Sciences Conference, 2012, p. 5" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  4. "Nalls, Three Squared, 1989". Gayilnalls.com. 2008-10-14. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  5. "Nalls, Cradle Pool, 1988". Gayilnalls.com. 2008-10-14. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  6. "Raynor, Vivien, "Artistic Visions Make a Case For a Troubled Environment", New York Times, June 14, 1992". Nytimes.com. 1992-06-14. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  7. "Video Reviews, Hinduism Today, November 1994". Hinduismtoday.com. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  8. "Pollack, Barbara, ARTNews, "Scents and Sensibility", March 1, 2011". Artnews.com. March 2011. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  9. Malcom, Christine, "A New Aromatic Paradigm", DCI, Vol. 163, Issue 6 (December 1998) p.21
  10. Nalls, Gayil (2012-05-09). "Nalls, G. Flashmob Robbins, Sensoria Blog, Psychology Today online, May 9, 2012". Psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  11. Nalls, Gayil (2012-02-08). "Nalls, G. "You Stink: Smell and Politics", Sensoria Blog, Psychology Today online, February 8, 2012". Psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  12. Nalls, Gayil (2011-10-20). "Nalls, G. "Is Occupy Part of the Solution?" Sensoria Blog, Psychology Today online, October 20, 2011". Psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  13. Nalls, Gayil (2011-03-04). "Nalls, G. "Jasmine: The Smell of Revolution", Sensoria Blog, Psychology Today online, March 4, 2011". Psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  14. "Exhibition catalog, Seeing Ourselves at MUSECPMI Museum, Curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, M.D. and Caitlin Hardy, M.D., March 6- April 14, 2012". Musecpmi.org. Archived from the original on 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  15. "Nalls, Hemispheres 1, 2004". Gayilnalls.com. 2008-10-14. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  16. "Gayil Nalls - Solo Exhibitions" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  17. "Dr Gayil Nalls | SMARTlab". Smartlab-ie.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-05. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  18. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Many Saudi Women Live Recklessly Under Theatrical Clothes". Metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  19. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Truth Will Not Always Give You Art". Metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  20. "Adam and Eve/Life in its Totality, from The 1986 Lab School Portfolio by Gayil Nalls / American Art". Americanart.si.edu. 1991-05-26. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  21. Flemming, Lee. Washington Iconoclassicism", Artemesia Gallery, Chicago, IL, April 6 - May 1, 1982
  22. "Kyle, Lorraine,World Sensorium: A Global Bouquet Attuning the Unity of All Cultures through Scent," NAHA Quarterly JJournal, Winter (2000)". Resourcesforlivingwell.com. Archived from the original on July 3, 2008. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  23. "Y2K Log: A Millennium Potpourri,” The Washington Post, December 29, 1999.
  24. Rita Giordano, “Artist to Unleash Global Scent of Peace Over Times Square,” The Denver Post, Denver, CO, December 29, 1999.
  25. "Rita Giordano, "Artist Will Debut 'World Scent' on N.Y. Revelers," Houston Chronicle, Houston, TX, December 29, 1999". Chron.com. 1999-12-29. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  26. Rita Giordano, “For New Years, A Global Bouquet,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 28, 1999.
  27. Vickie Karp, “The (Much Disputed) Scent of a New Millennium,” The New York Times, December 26, 1999.
  28. Allen Sarkin, “Holiday Madness Watches Times Square,” New York Post, December 26, 1999.
  29. Laura Klepacki, “Times Square Revelers To Ring in New Fragrance,” Women’s Wear Daily, December 23, 1999
  30. "Exhibition Catalog, Objects of Devotion and Desire: Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art, Hahn, Cynthia, pp. 17, 22 and Lucas, Sophia Marisa, pp. 26-27" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  31. For documentary images of this event, visit: World Sensorium.
  32. "Nalls' presented her scientific research for World Sensorium at the New York Academy of Sciences in 2007. Her abstract is included in the conference proceedings, Linking Affect to Action: Critical Contributions to the Oribtofrontal Cortex". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1121: 656–689. 2007-12-18. doi:10.1196/annals.1401.039. PMID 18156508.
  33. Avery Gilbert (2009-04-04). ""Portrait of the Artist: Gayil Nalls," interview by Dr. Avery Gilbert, First Nerve. April 4, 2009". Firstnerve.com. Archived from the original on March 2, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  34. "Montalbano, Mara, "Staten Island Art Exhibit Explores The Smells Of Occupy Wall Street", NY1". Ny1.com. Archived from the original on 2012-03-10. Retrieved 2012-07-25.
  35. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2018-03-14. Retrieved 2020-01-31.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  36. "Home - Gayil Nalls and the Massing Lab".
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