Nonfiction bottled 600 Koreans' scent memories into a Venice Biennale pavilion

A beauty brand usually sells aspiration; Nonfiction had to translate raw, heartfelt public memories — from bathhouses to a 'metallic metro smell' — into wearable fragrance without flattening them into marketing copy.

Build an olfactory portrait of Korea from an open call — 600+ memories distilled into keywords, then into 17 scents you walk through like places and eras.

Koo Jeong A and founder Haeyoung Cha collected 600+ written responses, selected the recurring keywords (sunlight, fallen leaves, rice, lacquered wood, public bathhouses), and Nonfiction's perfumers merged them into 17 fragrances, each occupying a section of the pavilion so visitors travel through Korea's locations and eras. In Paris, the team brought mugwort soap and ssanghwacha tea so the French noses could smell the originals. Dominique Ropion consulted on all and created two: 'Old Electronics' (black pepper, steel accord, olibanum) and 'Odorama Cities', the only scent sold commercially.

The pavilion ran at the Biennale in the Giardini until 24 November 2024, and 'Odorama Cities' — built as four eras of Korean history, from 1960s pine resin and salty wind to 2010s–20s asphalt and aldehyde subway air — went on sale from $186 at Nonfiction's stores and site.

For the 2024 Venice Biennale, Korean beauty brand Nonfiction and visual artist Koo Jeong A created an olfactory portrait of Korea. The method was an open call: 'What is your scent memory of Korea?' put to people from the country or with close links to it. Founder Haeyoung Cha says more than 600 written responses arrived — memories from cities and countryside, public and private — and Koo distilled the overlapping themes into keywords from the beautiful to the grubby: sunlight and fallen leaves, rice, lacquered wood, public bathhouses, a 'metallic metro smell'.

Nonfiction's team of perfumers interpreted and merged the stories into 17 fragrances, each occupying a different section of the pavilion, so visitors experienced the sensation of travelling through locations and time periods of Korea's history. The translation problem was real: at the first meeting in Paris, Cha recalls, the French perfumers couldn't know the nostalgic Korean scents, so the team brought mugwort soap from Korean baths and ssanghwacha herbal tea to let them experience the aromas firsthand — scents that even Cha, a Korean, had half forgotten.

The most significant nose was Dominique Ropion, who consulted on all 17 fragrances and created two. 'Old Electronics' carries black pepper, steel accord and olibanum resinoid. 'Odorama Cities' is the only perfume sold commercially: a scent pyramid of four moments in Korea's history — the 1960s 'forces of nature' of pine resin and salty wind, the 1970s–80s industrialisation of civets and ambrette seeds, the 1990s–2000s 'ordinary moments' of public baths and rice cooking, and the 2010s–20s 'urban nostalgia' of ambergris, aldehyde and asphalt after rain.

Cha frames the result as more than a perfume: 'a piece of art that encapsulates Korea's evolution... a reinterpretation of modern and contemporary Korean history.' Ropion calls it 'an intense portrait that captures the memories of epochs.' The pavilion showed in the Giardini until 24 November 2024; Odorama Cities sells from $186 at Nonfiction's online store and its Hannam, Samcheong and Sinsa shops.

The material is genuinely public: 600+ open-call memories, not a creative team's invented nostalgia, give the scents an authorship most brand commissions lack.

The artist-brand structure inverts the usual fragrance launch — the commercial product is one output of an artwork, not the artwork's purpose.

Craft problem-solving is documented: shipping mugwort soap and herbal tea to Paris so perfumers could smell the real references.

The final scent is structured as historiography — four scent-defined eras — making the pavilion and the bottle both readable as a portrait of a country.

A brand can commission culture instead of advertising: give the story to an artist, source the material from the public, and let the product be one honest output of the work.

The pavilion completed its run at the 2024 Biennale (Giardini, through 24 November). Odorama Cities remains commercially available from $186; the source reports no sales figures.