Yidan Kim GBA

Yidan Kim uses olfactory materials and sensations to create either intangible or tangible sensory imagery. The artist focuses on the sense of smell, which has been undervalued in the hierarchy of senses, exploring humans as sensory beings. She aims to provoke the expansion of sensory perception and cognition by emphasizing the sense of smell. She delves into the boundaries between human and non-human beings, or endeavours to shift the human-centric perspective to that of non-human entities, thereby focusing on non-material objects that exist beyond the realm of human perception.

Yidan Kim completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2024. She also studied Hyang-do, a traditional Korean fragrance ceremony rooted in East Asian culture, and researched olfactory object-mediators worldwide, collecting diverse olfactory materials. She researched olfactory cultures and olfactory object-mediators worldwide, collecting diverse olfactory materials. Drawing on the craft of incense-making and the techniques of fragrance oil perfumery, she manifests olfactory imagery synesthetically through sculpture, installations, and performances.

The 2024 work Fluid presents a "sculpture in a gaseous state." It captures the transition of substance in an installation where solid incense burns, becoming gas that flows through pipes and eventually condenses into liquid. The work attempts to give form and body to the intangible and imperceptible nature of smell/fragrance. In the installation work Human Nosework Training(2020), she visualized various everyday smells in the form of ‘smell balls’, randomly installed in space, proposing that viewers experience and train themselves to perceive smells between fragrance and odor by staying still, lying on the floor, or crawling around. In collaboration with sound artist Haedong Lee, the performance Ecology of Death and Annihilation(2021) reinterpreted the origin of art as ritual and ceremony. It depicted a synesthetic landscape through a contemporary ceremony that reconstructed olfactory and auditory elements.