Smoke Compositions — Chaveli Sifre

About Smoke - Invisible things, Reenchantments of the body.

Our senses co-create our reality; there is a feedback loop between the senses that shapes and generates our external and internal worlds. Focusing on a sense, like a door or a window, allows us to transform, recalibrate our appreciation of the world and our reality. Understanding the hierarchy of the senses as an inherited, not fixed system, becomes then a decolonial tool.

Smell is a portal; it simultaneously allows us to travel within ourselves, our associations, stories, and personal experiences. At the same time, it is a journey outward, towards the material world that comes into direct contact with our inner body; in other words, the act of smelling is a physical act of consuming something and making it ours.

Smell can also be a time machine that grants us access to how ancestral worlds might have smelled. When we think about history, we often focus on facts, events, and things that happened, but this is an invitation to access the past through its sensory universe and our intangible heritage.

I like to imagine a deep relationship, a sacred geometry, between the sinuous body of the river, a vitalizing artery of the Earth, and our own circulatory system. Similarly, tree resin, as a vital liquid, heals and invigorates the vegetal body. This connection leads us to reflect on the origins of our relationship with these resins and aromatic woods. Incense is as ancient and transcultural as fire itself; our ancestors discovered around ancestral bonfires that certain trees emitted distinct fragrances when burned. In the ancient world, where accessing the inner body was a challenge, smoke acted as a healing vehicle, penetrating the body without the need for a blade. The act of burning aromatic materials is present in all cultures, serving as both ritual and medicine, uniting the realms of the mundane (visible) and the divine (invisible). The act of inhaling becomes a magical act intimately linked to life.

Standing before a river, we can visualize the flow of time itself. The river represents a sacred topography, quenching the thirst of the earth's body in the same way that our animal body is irrigated by blood. Likewise, resin or sap vitalizes vegetal bodies. When a tree suffers a wound, a liquid flows, covering it, and over time, it coagulates into a hard and shiny substance, similar to precious stones. The smoke that rises to the sky is also a connection with the invisible world, a bridge between the two realms, a mirror of our impermanence and transition.

Click here to enjoy Smoke Compositions, an ASMR video
meditation on the history and materials of incense

Smoke Compositions | Tabonuco and Camphor is a ritual sculpture that invites us to consider the transformative power of smoke and its role in spiritual cleansing practices. The sculpture incorporates into the incense mixture tabonuco, a resin native to Puerto Rico used by the Tainos to light torches, and camphor, a substance commonly used in Caribbean cleansing practices known as "la limpia". As the scent rises from the censer, it evokes the potent power of smoke in cleansing rituals across cultures, from the burning of sage in Native American traditions to the use of incense in Catholic and Buddhist practices. "Smoke Compositions | Tabonuco and Camphor" offers a rich exploration of the cultural, historical and symbolic dimensions of smoke and its place in the human experience. Through the use of tabonuco and camphor, the sculpture connects us to ancestral Taino practices and Caribbean cleansing practices, particularly those linked to the Ifa tradition,

Smoke Compositions | Untitled (Theriaca Censer) 2022 Camphor, Ammonium Gum, and onycha operculum, ceramic "Smoke Compositions" is a ritual sculpture that takes the form of a penetrable censer in the shape of a modular, vibrating, zigzagging serpent, forming an ouroboros where incense burns. The shape of the censer evokes the winding course of the Gadalquivir River, where the work was activated, and the way the smoke rises and fills the air. The work also alludes to theriac, an ancient panacea made from various ingredients, including snakeskin, which was believed to cure most ailments. "Smoke Compositions" invites us to consider the intertwined histories of smell, medicine, commerce, and belief. The sculpture is a meditation on the enduring power of smell and its role in healing practices, as well as its associations with trade and exchange. By referencing theriacology, the work also speaks to the current fascination with panaceas and the promise of a universal cure.

Smoke Compositions - a meditation on the history of the Guadalquivir, the incense trade route, and incense as heritage, both symbolic and material Incense is a ritual as old as fire. The burning of incense refers to the combustion of aromatic material, a cross-cultural tradition that accompanies the history of mankind. Its longevity and widespread use reveal the dual nature of incense as a substance with both affective and symbolic meanings. In Smoke Compositions, visitors were invited to experience a participatory intervention, exploring a curated selection of resins that would have traveled along the historic Guadalquivir River trade route. The exhibition offers a space for reflection on the cultural significance of smoke, as a cross-cultural phenomenon linking spiritual and material (health) pursuits. Embedded in these materials, we can find our history of trade and mortality. Much of the incense is obtained from tree sap, this vital liquid nourishes the plant in the same way that our blood vitalizes our body and the river vitalizes the earthly body. Both blood and sap protect and regenerate. Resin is a tree's response to a wound, a liquid that flows, coating and finally coagulating, becoming hard and shiny, like a jewel.