Memory

As if some scary memory hidden away in some corner of my subconscious had put it on the alert against some imminent danger, my sense of smell was suddenly triggered in a quite exaggerated way a few years ago and a whole load of nameless odours invaded it as if a forgotten reality were all at once flowering before me. But the contact of the unnameable that prompts me to stretch my nose with the nosiness of dogs doesn’t keep me trapped in the world of presences, but very often brings back to me the smell of recollections lost in the thick mists of time.
For example, when I go to my parents’ house, even at the front door I know if my mother is at home, and with her scent — which is as old as I am — many others come back to me. I recall from one day when she was scolding me — for what, I can no longer say — the delicious scent of magnolias, which she must have been cutting in the garden, that completely saturated her. Memories, for me, have escaped the realm of more or less idealized narratives to become smells that I really sense, as if I could lift the lid off the jar of memory.
It seems perfectly clear that all of this must impregnate my work in some way or other, and I am happy to know that once they have left my hands, the people who acquire them and take care of them on my behalf still sense their smell. I recall it in my memory as I pace back and forth, barefoot, in my favourite corner of my studio.

Pep Agut
February 2009