‘The Scent of Memory: Olfactory Histories of UP Diliman’ for Diliman Dreams

The Scent of Memory: Olfactory Histories of UP Diliman is an exhibit that captures the sensorial experience of being and living in UP Diliman. The exhibition was curated by Lisa Ito of the College of Fine Arts. Below is her exhibition text:

“An Invitation to Breathe

Art, science, and memory merge in this olfactory installation by Catherine Sarah Young. Through a suite of ten scents, she distills intergenerational impressions of the University of the Philippines Diliman campus across its history since 1949: as a place, site, and space of meaning in and across time.

In exploring scent as a material for memory projects, Young presents both a homecoming gesture as a UPD College of Science alumnus and an inter-sensorial inquiry about the present. The works signify moments recalled from archival narratives from the university’s collective history and distilled from the environment: from spaces inhabited by various generations to the land comprising the Diliman campus in the postwar era.

In Marcel Proust’s novel, In Search of Lost Time (1927), an oft-cited passage describes affects triggered by a delicate cake and reminds us of the entangled relationship between the senses and remembering. These moments of olfaction are a way of cuing us into what was, and shape our own sense of what can be.

Offered as evocations and prompts, the works in this installation thus serve as a prelude to a smellscape of the present milieu:

Tatag. Aral. Tambay. Pahinga. Hilom.

Libot, Tipon. Lasap. Liyab. Tala.

What scents have steered our understanding of the past? What scents are now shaping a generation steeped in climate crises and global war?

Savor a moment to breathe and take in these re-collections. As fleeting presences, these are doubly precious in this time of rapid ecological and socio-economic change and unrest. The challenge asked of us: to attune oneself and ourselves, sensorially and sensitively, to shaping what lies next.”

I ran a workshop with university alumni and staff to agree on the ten scents, ranging from the environmental (petrichor!), to the intellectual (pens!), to the place-based (the university infirmary), to the gustatory (pancit canton!) and to the symbolism of the university as a place of struggle and student protest (Molotov cocktail). As an alumna of the college’s molecular biology and biotechnology program, it was fitting to host this artscience exhibition here. It was also awesome seeing my art colleagues here, as well as my former biology teacher who was one of those who taught me how to distill. The show ran until September 30th and in celebration of National Science and Technology Month.

I also ran an olfactory masterclass at the College of Fine Arts, which included a smell memory workshop, and my PhD work, the Olfactory Wheel for the Critical Zones.

This art-science collaboration with the College of Science and the College of Fine Arts was led by Vincent Juliano of the UP Office for Initiatives for Culture and the Arts.