It isn’t common for Blind to write about perfume, but Francis Kurkdjian’s exhibition is such a sensory event — a unique experience and a world-first of its kind — that it deserves attention. Francis Kurkdjian, master perfumer, Director of Perfume Creation at Dior, and founder of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, presents here a body of work in which scent becomes matter, space, and sensation. For 30 years, his practice has been guided by a central idea: turning perfume into a language, a form, a sculpture. It all began when artist Sophie Calle, well-known in photography circles, asked him whether he could reproduce the smell of money. Naturally, Kurkdjian chose the American one-dollar bill as a reference point — a bill used and exchanged countless times, carrying both the scent of money and of the streets of New York. “When I met Sophie Calle in 1999, I had only been a perfumer for four years,” he recalls. “She embodied an artistic desire I had long before meeting her. I experienced success very young, but also the reality of a profession ruled by many constraints.”
The exhibition, conceived as both a retrospective and an exploration, retraces the perfumer’s dialogue with other art forms — dance, architecture, performance, photography. From the moment you enter, you are confronted with his way of treating olfaction as a medium. Music, space, air, and the body all take part. As he explains: “Music and perfume are linked through air. Music is a vibration of air, perfume is carried by air.” To play with air is, in a sense, to sculpt the invisible. This idea runs throughout the exhibition, which multiplies diffusers, objects, devices, and installations designed to make perceptible what usually remains unseen.
In the galleries, historical projects sit alongside recent works. Here, visitors are invited to smell the fragrances that the “glove-perfuming” artisans of the Renaissance once applied to the gloves worn by horse riders to mask the smell of the animal. There, one can discover the perfume of Marie-Antoinette. Further on, earthy scents appear, as well as those of various flowers. Other rooms highlight Kurkdjian’s performative collaborations, such as the one with Finnish conductor and Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, Klaus Mäkelä: on December 22, 2022, they shared the stage of the Philharmonie de Paris for an unprecedented performance in which scented accords were released for each of the five movements of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2.
Throughout the parcours, the exhibition reveals the research of a creator for whom olfaction is a form of writing — all the more since perfume is not protected by copyright and can be copied. Marina Genet, Director of Communication at Maison Francis Kurkdjian, sums up this unique relationship between artist and medium: “Francis has always tried to share perfume differently, to move beyond a purely commercial or cosmetic approach. He wants to tell stories, spark emotions, open a space of freedom.” This sensory approach — demanding, curious, often experimental — shapes the entire scenography of the Palais de Tokyo. Kurkdjian is the only perfumer in the world to produce this type of artistic work alongside his commercial creations.
He has also worked with dancers for many years, and the gestures of the body have shaped his understanding of how scent diffuses. “Gesture is essential to him,” Genet adds. “In each creation, there is a way of entering, exiting, breathing — as if perfume were a movement.” This way of giving body to scent takes on a particular dimension in his collaboration with Sophie Calle. Their work together speaks of a mutual attraction: an artist exploring absence, loss, and traces; a perfumer attempting to reveal what evaporates.
Perfumed images by Christelle Boulé
At the heart of this sensory cartography, the work of Swiss-Canadian photographer Christelle Boulé introduces a visual exhale. The artist presents a selection of photograms from her project “Expanded Drops”, in which she applies fragrances from Maison Francis Kurkdjian (Baccarat Rouge, Grand Soir, Petit Matin…) directly onto color silver halide paper. A few drops are enough to provoke an explosion of shapes, layers, and colors — an abstract language giving form to the invisible.
She explains: “I began by simply placing a few drops of perfume on photosensitive paper. That very simple gesture fascinated me: the smell became color, texture, chemical reaction.” The photographic surfaces turn into alchemical grounds, where olfactory compositions leave unique, irreproducible marks. Boulé does not try to translate perfume. She gives it a visual existence of its own, meaningful only through the reaction of the fragrance itself. “I’m not trying to illustrate the smell. I’m looking for the trace, the imprint, something that testifies to a passage, even a tiny one.” Her approach strongly resonates with Kurkdjian’s, for whom olfaction remains an open experimental field.
In this series, each photogram converses with the creations presented by the Maison. Boulé’s approach is profoundly material. Where Kurkdjian works with air, she works with surface. “Perfume reacts differently depending on its age, its composition, its level of oxidation,” she says. “What interests me is that brief moment when the material transforms, when something appears. Each perfume has its own personality. Some explode in color, others are more muted. You can never know in advance what will happen.” The colors are never chosen; they arise from an unpredictable chemical process — from the encounter between an invisible substance and controlled light.
This fragility, this impossibility of recreating the same image twice, lies at the core of the series. It gives the photographs a quasi-documentary dimension: they become the archives of a moment, a perfume, a gesture. At the Palais de Tokyo, these works extend the exhibition’s intention: giving shape to what has none — a fragrance, an emotion. Vibrant and delicate, her photograms echo the idea of olfactory writing that Kurkdjian has embodied for three decades. And perhaps, too, the question of authorship: “It would be nice if perfumes were protected by copyright, just like my images,” Boulé adds.
“Eden”: A VR experience at the crossroads of reality and scent
The final part of the exhibition immerses visitors in an unprecedented sensory experience: “Eden”, a virtual-reality work conceived by director Cyril Teste and digital artist Hugo Arcier, in which scent becomes a narrative and emotional vector. The installation invites viewers to wander through a dreamlike landscape — a fragmented Garden of Eden — where each visual element is paired with a specific fragrance.
Through the VR headset, one encounters plants, trees, flowers, soil — each accompanied by its associated scent, diffused by a small device placed under the nose. But the atmosphere shifts: a storm breaks, and the previous scents mingle with the smell of rain. A constellation of natural odors that transport the visitor. “Francis loves working with artists who push the limits of what’s possible,” says Marina Genet. “VR opens a new door — a space where scent can create an emotion as powerful as sound or image. Here, perfume is a guide. It’s the first time many visitors physically understand how a smell can structure a narrative.”
The exhibition shows how Kurkdjian, Teste, and Arcier conceive perfume as a total immersive space, far beyond any cosmetic or decorative function. The VR piece dialogues with the rest of the parcours: olfactory installations, objects, performances, and artistic collaborations all form a single writing, one in which air becomes material to sculpt. Visitors emerge with the impression of having traveled differently. Perfume doesn’t illustrate. It makes you feel.
“I find it exciting to live in my time,” tells Kurkdjian. “My father was one of the pioneers of computing in France in the 1960s. I’ve always loved technology. How could we ignore virtual reality? If tomorrow the world becomes fully virtual, smells won’t disappear. Smell is what differentiates us from machines — it’s tied to our humanity. Sensory experience defines our connection to the body. When I compose a perfume, I go through sensations, through words, through images. Everything I cannot express through these words, these sensations, these images — perfume allows me to say.”
“Parfum, sculpture de l’invisible” is on view at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, until November 23, 2025. More information on Maison Francis Kurkdjian here. More information on Christelle Boulé here.
