6 days ago
The scent of memory: A conversation with Francis ‘Kurky' Kurkdjian of Maison Francis Kurkdjian
You have been a ballet dancer, an aspiring fashion designer and you have a history of creating artistic olfactory installations. What do you see as the relationship between perfume-making and other arts?
Any form of art is a language, aimed at telling a story and create emotions, while expressing the artist's vision. Scent is the language I use to express mine, to tell my stories.
However, I believe perfume in a bottle is not art, as it is not entirely the process of a free expression. Perfume is meant to be pleasant and please. It is supposed to evoke nice, beautiful emotions and convey seductiveness, pleasure, glamour and positive attitude. Art is not about that only. Art is about the whole spectrum of emotions, positive and negative. This difference is very important to me. Beauty in art can be conveyed through dark thoughts or even ugliness or misery; the opposite of what beauty (in commercial products) is about. This is why I believe olfactive installations can bring a total new field in the world of smell, real art and new emotions. It's a territory where I can freely explore feelings that I would not be able to express in the context of a commercial scent.
I had the chance to have a family that got me into the world of arts at an early age, so I grew up curious about everything and developed a love of art, music, ballet and couture. My career as a classical ballet dancer was short-lived but I can assure you that ballet and perfume are more similar than you might think. A dancer must know how to master a stage with their movements, in the same way that a good perfume fills up the space with its trail. The mastery of the space, the concept of balance, the fluidity of movement which must be seamless… these elements are like the sequence of the ingredients in a formula, they have to be mastered to get the desired result.
I have worked with my friend, art director Cyril Teste on scenting the Cocteau / Philip Glass Trilogy interpreted by pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque, with three accords diffused over the course of the concert. We conceived a beautiful show mixing music, light and fragrance for a poetic experience at the Paris Philharmonic and the Barbican Theatre, in London.
Our artistic installation at West Bund Art & Design, a prestigious art fair in Shanghai, explored the cultural ties between France and China, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between the two countries. We achieved that through scented rose petals, handmade at the Manufacture de Sèvres, the very best of French porcelain-making. You see, both the rose and the craft of porcelain come from China and became some of the finest symbols of French lifestyle around the world, showing how cultural influences and exchanges can beautifully influence our world.
