Foresealed
mixed-media olfactory installation
Foresealed is a site-specific installation that explores the sensory preservation of an ecosystem that is in flux. Responding to the accelerating effects of the climate crisis in the Arctic region, the work considers how olfactory traces of a landscape might be archived before they disappear.
Inspired by everyday practices in the region, where vacuum sealing and freezing are common strategies for managing seasonal scarcity and foreseeing the future, the installation adopts these gestures by collecting and distilling distinct smells from the Arctic environment, freezing them into ice cubes, and vacuum sealing them as scarce goods.
By decontextualising a domestic practice and repositioning it as a speculative form of archiving, preservation becomes an act of care that simultaneously produces distance and inaccessibility.
*Supported by Kvitbrakka AiR in Berlevåg, Finnmark, Norway