Aadita Chaudhury

York University, Toronto, Canada

In the series of photographs called Chasing Flames created for the UNIDEE residency, I have captured images of smoke as a way to more intimately know fire – the topic of my PhD dissertation. In smoke, the flame gets fragmented and diffracted through the atmosphere, carrying with it particulate matter, and the olfactory properties of what is undergoing combustion. Accordingly, smoke becomes the olfactory messenger that creates a direct relationship between observers of a flame and their internal worlds and organs as it is carried through the nostril through the shared atmospheric space. Capturing olfactory sensations digitally is not yet possible, but perhaps, still images of smoke emanating may let us get close to the proverbial fire of their origin. Smell is the sense that is most closely linked to memory, and this series of images capture the moment in which smoke from the burning of very specific items drew out memories relevant to a particular time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The images show an interplay between multiple senses (sight, smell, touch) and different spatial and temporal contexts triggered by the associated memories.