Palimpsests II
Photo by
JC Llaguno
Palimpsests II is a site-responsive olfactory installation developed for Le Petit Versailles, an active community garden shaped by histories of activism and ecological stewardship. Soil-based composite forms were distributed across the garden, forming a fragmented spatial field rather than a single object. Scent was released through combustion and slow seepage, creating intermittent moments of presence that shifted with time and movement. The work foregrounded smell as a spatial interface, drawing attention to the coexistence of decay and regeneration and to the persistence of ecological memory within contested urban environments.
The installation was composed of three sensory fields to surface different layers: the garden’s suppressed olfactory ecology, the airflow shaped by the enclosure, and the temporal instability of the site.
Presented as part of Hide and Seek, curated by Debora Morelli, at Le Petit Versailles, New York (September 2025).
Le Petit Versailles is an active community garden and public cultural site operating within a dense urban context.
This project is part of an ongoing body of work that uses scent as a spatial and temporal material to reveal suppressed ecological systems, layered histories, and conditions that persist beneath the visible surface of the city.