Gayil Nalls, Ph.D. (born 1953, Washington, DC) is an artist, philosopher, and theorist. Her work explores the individual’s internal wilderness within greater ecological and social systems. Nalls’ body of multimedia work unites art, physics, evolutionary science, anthropology and technology in pursuit of forming new methods of understanding human experience.
Specifically, her art addresses the themes of the human co-evolution with nature, memory, socio-political impulse and aesthetics. As a pioneer of the field of olfactory art, she has created numerous works that affect mood and behavior by smell or ingestion.
Nalls’ major social olfactory sculpture, World Sensorium, is the result of over a decade of research into neuroaesthetics, botany, the anthropology of olfaction (or smell), and the “aesthetics of...
Gayil Nalls: World Sensorium (1999- ) aromatic phytogenic material (100 ml at 25%), borosilicate bottle Displayed in the exhibition Aromatic Art (Re-)constructed: In Search of Lost Scents at VU
