Peter De Cupere
(Louvain,
1970 )
Peter De Cupere is like a doctor of Fragrance Art and has pioneered internationally as a visual artist working with scents. He broke through with Model for Disappearing Art during the city exhibition Over the Edges (2000) in Ghent. That Madonna statue in the material of toilet odor cubes dissolved over the course of the exhibition. Since then, De Cupere has been building a diverse body of work in which he combines visual elements with olfactory ones: from fragrances for perfumes over aromas from the food industry to experiments with flowers, fungi, soaps and even human horsetails. De Cupere advocates abandoning natural and culturally determined prejudices against scents and fully experiencing their direct, subjective and associative impact. Beyond the artistic, he also explores the medium's social and therapeutic potential. For example, he interviewed dementia sufferers, cancer patients and Auschwitz survivors, among others. Through olfactory memories, he approaches themes of trauma and loss, or raises questions of identity.
