I met multidisciplinary artist Indu Antony when we were both presenting at an ethnography symposium. My paper was about what it meant for an individual to explore the city of Bengaluru on foot. Antony, on the other hand, talked about what it meant to do the same, guided by your nose.
Intrigued by her project, I approached Antony after the seminar. She was standing near a table where she laid out a range of vials and scented papers ensconced in large glass bell jars to protect their odours. Her project, aptly titled, Vāsané or smell in Kannada (the official language of the state Karnataka, of which Bengaluru is the capital city), captured the myriad scents that showcase Bengaluru’s multifariousness.
As an allergy-prone individual with a perennial stuffy nose, detecting smells has never been my forte. I might be the wrong person to appreciate the project, I informed Antony, to which she responded by handing me a vial and saying, “Try it; you might be surprised.” And surprised I was because I could instantly smell the mellifluous scent of a sponge cake — not just any sponge cake, but the one from the city’s popular Iyengar Bakery. I did not grow up in Bengaluru, but the scent transported me to a time when childhood treats were sourced from local bakeries. These simple cakes, bereft of lofty layers of frosting and decorations, brought more joy than any other decadent goodies.
In an attempt to know more, and not just because Antony gave my nose hope, a few weeks after the symposium, I found myself outside her studio in one of Bengaluru’s oldest neighbourhoods, Cooke Town. The Kāņike Studio, Antony explained as she ushered me in, is shared by three artists. The name stands for vision, perception or a token of affection or respect in Kannada. Inside, a potpourri of objects grabbed my attention — photographs of various kinds, sculptures placed on a high shelf, books, wool stashed in a corner, boxes that seemed to contain bits and pieces of clothing and two large distillers. Surrounded by these objets d’art, I questioned Antony about her creative journey and why the sense of smell is so undervalued.
Antony is a trained dental doctor with a post-graduate degree in diabetology, the research and treatment of diabetes and related metabolic disorders. “But I always knew that I wanted to be an artist. As I was good in studies, my parents wanted me to pursue medicine, so I completed the degree and promptly moved to arts,” she said. And how did the family react to her decision? “They are not happy about it, but that’s okay,” Antony added with a short laugh.
The connection between science and art is evident from her surroundings, explained Antony, as the artists she shares her studio with also come from science backgrounds. “Having studied medicine, I understand smells better, which helps me work with them. I know how olfactory receptors send information to the parts of the brain that also evoke emotions and capture memories. The sense of smell is very underrated, and I realised that it is important for me to not just talk about smells but explore the sense further,” the artist elaborated.
Antony’s journey as an artist began with photography and installations, but her exploration of smells came as a way of processing a repressed traumatic experience while spotlighting issues of child sex abuse and patriarchy. In 2017, for her project, Vincent Uncle she tried to recreate a particular smell that haunted her for years after the incident. “I wanted to understand what that smell meant. I grew up in Dubai, and everyone there uses attar (an essential oil made from natural ingredients like flowers, spices, herbs, etc.). I remembered some kind of attar smell, but it wasn’t pleasant. I collected the sweat from many men and tried to mix it with the oils to narrow down the particular smell,” said Antony.
Drawn by the power of olfactory art, Antony then visited the city of Mysuru to explore the fragrances of the incense stick industry. But it was the pandemic that got her thinking about cities and their distinct smells. “People were losing their sense of smell and taste, and that made me want to archive the smells of the city. A lot of my work is a reflection of what is happening around me. I react to the city where I am,” said Antony. Thus, the idea of Vāsané was born.
To understand what smells define Bengaluru, Antony documented oral histories from about 200-odd people and saw them describe smell as a memory of the place. “Bengaluru as a city is changing so rapidly. I leave the city for two weeks and return to find a new flyover. In any gathering, people constantly speak about these rapid changes. More than any other city, there is a strong sense of nostalgia for a Bengaluru that was—before traffic, pollution, and rampant development took over,” shared Antony.
People shared memories of freshly baked breads from local bakeries, flower markets, incense sticks sold in bus stops, filter coffee and more, giving Antony a list of 137 smells to profile. The artist finally narrowed the list to 12 significant smells that made their way to the book. Initially, she worked with a wholesale fragrance dealer in the city who helped her with the process, before making her studio her primary lab. Apart from the sponge cake, the flower market and filter coffee, Antony also worked to capture the smells of the spice market and the signature Mysore Sandal Soap, an iconic product that’s been around for over 100 years.
But not all the smells archived in the project are the ‘good smells’. Antony also captured the smell of garbage and a polluted lake in the city to show how memories span both the good and bad sides of a city.
It took Antony about two years to finish archiving these smells, with some profiles taking longer than others. “With the sponge cake, for example, I also wanted to capture the moistness that is such an essential part of the cake. It took me close to a year to get that right,” said Antony. She pointed to a small test tube placed inside a container along with some grass. “Here, I am trying to capture the smell of the grass from the city’s popular Cubbon Park. Some days, I wonder why I got into this,” added Antony with a laugh.
The response to Vāsané has been nothing short of amazing, shared Antony. The second edition is almost sold out, and Antony soon plans to work on the next one. “At first, a lot of people did not understand the concept. But when they got to experience the smells in the book, it kindled their memories of the city,” the artist explained.
Vāsané joins a small league of similar projects in India, where smells help one navigate a city. In 2017, journalists from a leading Indian newspaper, The Hindu, documented the smells of the city of Kochi in the southern state of Kerala. In 2019, the capital city’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art showcased the Smell Assembly, a curated project that included walks and collections of smells from three places in Delhi, and Swiss artists Maeva Rosset and Giovanni Sammarco also visited India to create smellscapes.
While the perfume industry is all set to witness significant growth in the coming decade, Antony posited that the sense of smell as a means to comprehend places and spaces is still not mainstream. In 2024, she visited the town of Grasse in France, the world’s perfume capital, to train her nose, and was fascinated to see that in every other corner, someone was making their own scents. Antony herself has also conducted a smell walk in Bengaluru and shared that the participants were surprised and overwhelmed by all the smells they could sense. “I think people really need to step back every once in a while and smell their city more,” she said.
Antony’s most recent project is the Whispers of Pastoral Scents, where she is collaborating with the Centre For Pastoralism and Living Lightly; a traveling exhibit on India’s Deccan pastoralist communities, to raise awareness about the communities, their livelihoods and the challenges they face. The smells include sheep dung, wool, and parts of Sesbania grandiflora, a small tree that the sheep feed on, among other elements of their lives. The exhibit was on display at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Bengaluru in February 2025.
Olfactory art is just one aspect of Antony’s long list of projects that have brought to light issues with women’s welfare and safety, among other key topics. She established Namma Katte (‘our space’ in Kannada), “a place for women and children to do nothing” close to her studio. “Women are constantly tasked with the idea of productivity, and rarely do you see them idling around in public spaces,” explained Antony. Her other project, Cecilia’ed, spotlights the lack of public spaces for women.
The award-winning artist seems to highlight the overlooked obviousness in the world around us. When I shared this observation with her, she responded with a smile and said, “I don’t know how to generalise or define my work. I am an observer. I observe my life and the world around me. Things that move me, I want to talk about them through the right medium.”
