Description

OFI – A Memory of Cloth, Custodianship and Continuity

OFI is an Afro-Baroque olfactory artwork inspired by a scent memory familiar to many African families, yet rarely acknowledged as part of our cultural heritage.

For generations across Africa, clothing was more than adornment. It was identity, status, memory and archive. Garments were carefully folded and preserved in wooden chests, wardrobes and cupboards. Handwoven textiles such as Aso Oke, lace, Ankara, George wrappers, ceremonial robes and treasured family heirlooms were stored with care, often protected by naphthalene balls and other preservation materials. These spaces carried a distinctive scent, one that quietly became part of the emotional landscape of home.

To many, it was the scent of a grandmother’s closet. A place where stories lived.

A place where wedding fabrics rested beside ancestral garments. Where special occasion attire waited patiently for naming ceremonies, festivals, church services and family celebrations. Where memory was folded into cloth and passed from one generation to the next.

Long before digital photographs and cloud storage, wardrobes and trunks served as living archives of family history.

OFI explores this overlooked dimension of African material culture through the language of scent. The work asks an important question:

What if the smell of preservation is itself a cultural artifact?

Across the continent, the scent of stored fabrics, aged wood, pressed garments, skin memory and naphthalene became intertwined with ideas of family, care, continuity and belonging. Although often dismissed as ordinary or old-fashioned, these aromas occupy a powerful place within collective memory. A single trace of them can transport a person decades into the past, reconnecting them with people, places and experiences that shaped their identity.

Through OFI, Afro-Baroque Perfumer Deola Abélà Inyang documents and reinterprets this sensory heritage.

Rather than presenting memory as nostalgia alone, OFI positions scent as an archive. It recognizes that history is not preserved only through books, monuments and photographs. It is also carried through smell, through the invisible traces that accompany everyday life.

OFI therefore stands as both an artwork and a cultural inquiry. It invites visitors to consider how ordinary domestic spaces become custodians of memory, how scent preserves emotional history, and how African stories continue to live within the sensory experiences that shaped generations before us.

At its heart, OFI is a reminder that culture is not only what we see or record. It is also what we smell.

And sometimes, the fragrances that seem most ordinary are the very ones that tell us who we are.