This one is actually the partner of my friend.
This one is my partner after working out.
Very distinct.
This is Ani Liu. She bottles people’s smells.
This is one of the first ones I made of myself.
It smelled very animal to me.
Even I myself sometimes, when I step back from it,
think like, "I guess this really does trigger some disgust."
But I like it when art pushes the boundaries of what we find acceptable.
Ani is a research-based artist.
For one of her projects, she is preserving the everyday smells of the people she loves.
She wanted to focus on the things we lose when we communicate through screens.
I spend so much time in front of my computer coding or building circuits for other projects.
I think there was a moment where I was like, "I'm a biological being with certain sensory longings."
I grew up in Chinatown, and there were a lot of smells that were very vibrant and lovely and beautiful to me.
And then when I first went to elementary school I had that classic immigrant moment where
people were like, "Ew, that smells really weird. What is that in your lunch?" Or something like that.
And I became really sensitive to what smells right and what smells wrong
or what smells acceptable and what doesn't.
I think part of this project also came from my being in a long distance relationship for a really long time.
I mean, we have a lot of technologies that help with that.
Like, you can call each other on the phone, you can text a lot.
But there were certain things that I really missed.
This is my husband, I think after sex.
It actually brings back really strong emotions.
To make human perfumes, Ani soaks used garments in a solvent
to extract the molecules that we can smell.
Then, she distills the essence of that extraction
and mixes in chemicals and fixatives to create perfume.
And it really does smell like someone after working out.
But why would anyone want that?
I would say that when I tell people that one of my art projects is making human perfumes,
they're either like, "Oh my God, I want that. Can you make one for me of this?"
or they're kind of like, "Oh that's super creepy and kind of weird."
Ani says that smell can ground us in the moments we’ve lost,
and in doing so, help us move on.
Can I smell what it was like to be in love with this person at this particular moment in time?
I get a lot of emails from people who are like,
"Oh my God, can you make a perfume of my baby?"
"I love this new baby smell and I know that this person is gonna grow up."
"And you know I'm gonna lose this moment."
And sometimes I'm kind of like,
"Should the efforts in my practice be more about the act of letting go or hanging on?"
Or maybe this perfume making is a ritual that allows me to eventually let go.
And she says, it’s not about just reliving experiences.
It’s also about creating new ones.
I think a lot of the really exciting things that people talk about, like virtual reality or augmented reality,
both, you know, centered on the word reality but only kind of hit on the visual.
But there's so many more aspects to being human.
And some of the best innovations that we have come from accidents
and moments where people are allowed to play with their brain and let as many associations collide as possible.