You've gotta love interviews that ask you about your childhood. It is interesting, though, to be recognized by members of the perfume industry, because there is a definite overlap between their current interests and what I do in my art practice. It's sort of like this:
What I find perverse is that, in spite of working for years in so-called "visual" art, what I am recognized for, both in popular and critical contexts, is the olfactory stuff. This is perfectly fine with me. Except that there is a conceptual and critical legacy out of which my work in the senses has emerged. (To the extent I worry) I worry that art people think the olfactory stuff is an altogether new direction for me, or possibly a turning away from my work in institutional critique and contextual practices. Of course it's not, but the bulk of what gets printed about my work focuses exclusively on smells, and rarely does it connect it back to the conceptual art/institutional critique legacies to which I am indebted. It's sort of like this:
Again, not a issue. In fact, if I had a self esteem problem I would just assume that my other work sucks. But my sense is that smell is captivating to a lot of people right now, and when that wears off we will get 1) more nuanced writing about the discipline, and 2) more writing that seamlessly integrates scent-based art into the larger contemporary art project.