For visually impaired art fans, Philly museum’s scent-based exhibit ‘leveled the playing field’ By Lisa Bryant for Billy Penn Dec. 26, 20222 When Denice Brown was invited to tour the immersive olfactory exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, she imagined an encounter of familiar smells of Philadelphia. “I thought about all the odors I…

Sissel Tolaas’s RE: by Murtaza Vali for Art Agenda December 16, 2022 A visit to Sissel Tolaas’s RE_________ is unnerving, exciting, and, ultimately, strangely liberating. Countering the deodorization of social and cultural life, in the West especially, Berlin-based Tolaas has, for three decades, worked to remind us of the importance of the sense of smell…

Sissel Tolaas: RE_________ By Travis Diehl for Flash Art December 2022 It’s a disturbing sight, at first: a person up against the wall of the ICA in Philadelphia, sniffing it. Then again, it’s also a disturbing smell – an olfactory artwork by Sissel Tolaas called Fear 21/21 (2021-22). This part of the building’s exterior, and…

Sissel Tolaas’s RE_________ is artist’s 25 years of practice at ICA, University of Pennsylvania By Shraddha Nair Nov 9, 2022 The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at University of Pennsylvania recently inaugurated Sissel Tolaas: RE_________, a solo exhibition by Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas. Tolaas works with an invisible material. An intangible form with infinite memory…

At the ICA Philadelphia, Sissel Tolaas Presents Smell as a Poetic Provocation by Iris McCloughan Nov. 8, 2022 Walking into the cavernous first-floor gallery of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia—where RE_________, an exhibition by the Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist Sissel Tolaas is currently on view (through Dec. 30)—feels like stepping into a scientist’s…

The Nose Knows By Irma Kiss Barath for 34th Street October 6, 2022 Sissel Tolaas wants you to smell fear. Her exhibition RE__________, newly opened at the ICA, offers a sprawling tour of our shared smellscape; from sandy beaches to dollar bills, the Norwegian chemist–turned–artist has set out to capture the smells—both foul and fragrant—of…

At Penn museum’s art of smells exhibit, beauty is in the nose of the beholder By Frank Rudnesky for Philly Voice September 21, 2022 A new art exhibit on University of Pennsylvania’s campus requires visitors to use their noses instead of their eyes. The first major U.S. exhibition by Norwegian-born, smell researcher and artist Sissel…

Dollars and scents: Follow your nose through this exhibition at ICA By Peter Crimmins for WHYY With rare exceptions, the art world has been ignoring your nose. One of the few champions of the olfactory senses as an artistic medium is Sissel Tolaas, a Norwegian-born, Berlin-based artist that has been exploring smells for more than…

Exploring the depth of smell through art By Brandon Baker for Penn Today September 15, 2022 In March 2020, Sissel Tolaas spent two weeks in Norway’s Astrup Fearnley Museet—living, breathing, and smelling the building, imagining a new exhibition that, with the threat of COVID-19, she realized may never actually open. An artist, chemist, and linguist…

Classroom, meet gallery; gallery, meet classroom by Brandon Baker March 15, 2022 Linda Goode Bryant, artistic director of RAW Academie at ICA, was on a panel in 2014 at the Brooklyn Museum, where she’d been invited to speak to an audience about her exhibition, “Crossing Brooklyn.” Looking out at the audience from above, the dynamic…