July 25 – September 28, 2025

Opening: Friday, July 25, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

As part of her artist residency at La Nueva Fábrica, multidisciplinary artist Karola Braga presents The Sacred Sensorial Dimension of Scents, an installation curated by Ana Carolina Ralston that invites us to explore scent as a form of memory, resistance, and sacred presence.

The exhibition stems from Braga’s extensive research on copal and its historical transformation—from its ancestral uses to its redefinition following the religious occupation of the Americas. According to regional cosmologies, it was the sacred serpent Kukulkán who descended from the heavens to transmit knowledge to humankind, uniting sky and earth, body and spirit. This narrative, however, came into tension with the symbolic structures imposed by colonization, in which scent—once a spiritual offering—was turned into a liturgical tool serving colonial power.

In this sensory-symbolic territory, Braga activates an olfactory landscape through three perfumed wax panels and natural incenses, along with a central structure of heated charcoal that the public is invited to activate using raw materials arranged around it. Each element resonates with deeply rooted spiritual rituals, transforming both space and perception.

The Sacred Sensorial Dimension of Scents offers a collective and intimate experience. The act of burning resins not only releases aroma, but also awakens ancestral knowledge that survives through time. Through scent, the artist summons other ways of remembering—shifting our focus toward what vibrates, pulses, and persists, even when unseen.

The exhibition is made possible with production support from Fundación Ernesto Ventós.

Karola Braga (Brazil, 1988) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with scent as a sensory, political, and critical language. Her practice includes installations, sculptures, and performances that explore memory, ancestry, and impermanence. She has exhibited internationally, including at Desert X AlUla and the Bienal do Mercosul, and received the 2025 Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent. Braga combines natural and synthetic technologies—using resins, smoke, ceramics, perfumed wax, microencapsulation, polymers, and textiles—to invoke new forms of presence and resistance.