Irina Adam
Pitch Pine Pollen: A Transforming Forest
May 9-25, 2024
Thursday, May 9 6pm to 8pm: opening reception
Friday, May 17 6pm: artist talk
Olfactory Art Keller is honored to present Pitch Pine Pollen: A Transforming Forest, a solo exhibition of recent work by Brooklyn-based perfumer and multimedia artist Irina Adam. The exhibit is centered on aromatic plant extracts first created as mementos of one of the artist’s favorite hiking spots, a secluded coastal patch of the Long Island Pine Barrens.
Pine Barrens Series, #448 Irina Adam; 2024; 18” x 24” archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper
The scents are accompanied by photographs that are part of an ongoing project capturing the visual poetry and abstract shapes of the forest. In 2022, the Pitch Pines dominating the forest started being decimated by the Southern Pine Beetle, which migrated up due to increasing temperatures. Irina found herself recording green needles turning to red, then grey. Tall grasses took over the newly sunny spots, thorny native vines threw their tendrils into ghostly trunks. A swarm of woodpeckers cleaned the tree tops. Spiderwebs tangled over branch tips, and small bogs formed where the trees stopped absorbing water.
After one day’s sobering visit to a pine forest with no smell, Irina was delighted in spring by the vibrant sweet scent of pine pollen that burst from the last surviving branches, and got inspired to preserve the forest's scentscape. The pollen continued to emit its tenacious buzzing aroma while suspended in alcohol. She also infused pine resin, which the trees released as defense against the beetles, needles, and green pollen tips, as well as neighboring fragrant tree flowers of beach plum and oak. She composed her latest perfume, Pitch Pine Pollen with these wild ingredients, an evocative tree-flower and pine pollen amber made in collaboration with a changing forest.
Pitch Pine Pollen: A Transforming Forest compels us to witness the reality of swift, irreversible loss due to global warming. But it also invites us to engage with the surprising beauty of change and resilience. The landscape goes on, but transformed. Created in the Napeague area, meaning ‘land overflowed by the sea’ in native Montaukett. A portion of all sales from this show will be donated to the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, an environmental education and advocacy organization focusing on protecting drinking water and preserving open space, especially in Long Island’s Pine Barrens.
artist statement
My work explores connecting with nature in immersive and reciprocal ways. Landscape is subject not background, interacting with the viewer. Much of my inspiration comes from wild places I return to, season after season.
This multi-sensory exhibit invites conversation with the story of a forest, bearing witness through image as well as partaking in its breath through scent. During the pandemic, like many others I found myself hiking much slower while recovering from Covid, then Lyme. I contemplated the reality of being a body in a forest, both taken over by tiny parasites proliferated by humans in some way. With this work, I’m sharing my love for a land and the old trees befriended over time.