De Cupere to bring to Cuba essences of women from around the world

By: Octavio Borges Perez

Havana.-Peter de Cupere, renowned Belgian artist who will participate in the 20th edition of the Havana Biennial will bring his installation titled Los olores de lo extraño(strange smells) with concentrated scents of almost 50 women from around the world.

This artist focuses on the use of odors as main theme in his works, as well as an instrument of relationships among people and of mutual knowledge.

He has attended “The importance of being exhibition”, of Belgian contemporary art, which recently opened at the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Peter de Cupere exhibits in the building of Universal Art Smoke Cloud, a great interactive piece with the visitors, with which he denounces environmental pollution affecting our planet, looking like a white cloud and when you go inside, it smells like a polluted environment.

For May, Peter de Cupere plans to intervene spaces at the Quinta de Los Molinos Quinta place, where he will handle plants with rare scents, as a metaphorical allusion to the necessary breakdown of physical and mental borders the mankind needs to face the challenges imposed by the species survival.

This work is titled El olor de lo extraño and adds to his work, which is a call for respecting the women since human being existence would not be possible without them.

In exclusive statements to AIN, the singular artist showed a tiny glass tube test, in which he concentrates the essence of 48 women of diverse ethnic groups and parts of the world, with which he will handle plant materials he finds in La Quinta de Los Molinos.

Cupere lives a sensory experience transcending smell when creating olfactory objects, paintings and sculptures, videos and performances live, in which the sense of smell is essential.

His art has caused controversy since he has used female pubic hairs to make brushes with which he works essences of vagina and his Deflowering, the Virgin Maria statue, located in the abandoned Church of Kievilnest, in the Dutch city of Amberes which caused a huge stair.

That frozen piece exhales similar smells to the female genitals when is melted.

Such experiences will be appreciated by the Cuban public and visitors in Havana city, when he opens its unique installation El olor de lo extraño.

Source: AIN