Concise Biography
Oswaldo Maciá creates olfactory-acoustic sculptures responding to time, place and the ever-changing nature of our planet. Stimulating questions about how we find our place in the world, Maciá’s immersive scenarios of sound and smell are held in international art collections and have been exhibited globally, including at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Manifesta 9, Venice Biennial, Daros Latinamerica, Riga Biennial, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain, Kunsthalle Bremen, Site Santa Fe and Porto Alegre Biennial. Maciá won the Golden Pear at the 2018 Art & Olfaction Awards for his experimental work with scent; in 2015 was awarded a public commission for the city of Bogotá, creating the first public sound sculpture in the southern hemisphere; and in 2011 received the prestigious first prize at the 2011 Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador. Maciá was born in the Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. He lives and works in London and New Mexico. Focusing on migration and cross-pollination.
Maciá is currently working on. In 2023 he will participate in the exhibition. Odor. Immaterial sculptures at: MGKSiegen, Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Siegen), in cooperation with the Tiroler Landesmuseen Ferdinandeum (Austria), curated by Thomas Thiel.
Scale: Sculpture (1945-2020) at La Fundación Juan March (Madrid, Spain), curated by Penelope Curtis.
À bruit secret. Hearing in Art at: Tinguely Museum (Basel), curated by Annja Müller-Alsbach.
The Theatre of Energy at: Skellefteå Museum AB, department MAN - Museum Anna Nordlander,
(Sweden), curated by Cecilia Andersson.
Extended Biography
Oswaldo Maciá was born in the Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. He lives and works in London, UK and Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
In 1976 he attended the School of Fine Arts in Cartagena at the age of 16, graduating in 1980. In 1982 he moved to Bogotá to study advertising at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, and left after five semesters to become a full-time artist. Maciá taught Fine Art at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University from 1985 before moving to Barcelona in 1989, where he studied Mural Painting at Llotja School of Fine Art.
In 1990 Maciá moved to London, where he continues to run a studio. He studied BA Sculpture between 1990 and 1993 at Guildhall University, followed in 1994 by Masters in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In the 1990s his work featured in solo exhibitions in London venues at the forefront of defining installation art, including the Museum of Installation and Clove Gallery, and group exhibitions such as “Ideal Standard Summertime” at Lisson Gallery.
Maciá creates olfactory-acoustic sculptures that have been exhibited all over the world. His work is held in international collections, including Tate, Daros Latinamerica, and Collection Catherine Petitgas. His sculptures have been included in numerous large-scale periodic exhibitions and solo presentations across four continents. As he states in his manifesto, Maciá seeks to stimulate questions and counter received opinion. In 2015 Maciá won a major public commission for the city of Bogotá selected by an international jury. “Scenario in Construction” is the first public sound sculpture in the southern hemisphere.
The sense of smell features in many of Maciá’s sculptures. In 2018 he was commissioned by the first Riga Biennial to create “An Opera of Cross-Pollination: for Riga Biennial” a room-sized olfactory-acoustic sculpture that positions the audience at the frontier where knowledge ends and ignorance begins. According to Maciá, this is the place where the senses begin to speak. In a yellow room, volumes of insect sounds gathered from the rainforest in Choco, Colombia combine with the sounds of metal fences and the scent of cross-pollination. In his sculptures Maciá builds ideas over time. In 2020 “An Opera of Cross-Pollination: for Catherine Petitgas” was presented in France at MOCO Montpellier Contemporain with a new audio composition, comprising recordings of insect calls from Chiapas, Mexico and sounds of the wind recorded in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
In 2021 he developed the project “New Cartographies of Smell Migration” for Kunsthalle Bremen (Germany), which was then adapted for Site Santa Fe (New Mexico, USA). In this expansive work Maciá presents historical, geographical and biological dimensions of smell, and sets perceptions and thoughts in motion. Filling an entire room “New Cartographies of Smell Migration” celebrates migration in all its forms, addressing itself equally to the nose, eyes and ears. The fragrance at the core of the installation comes from tree resin and styrax gum. The walls are filled with cartographic large-scale drawings noting global connections created through the sense of smell, engendered through trade, winds and insects. In Germany, the installation included an LP record, blending the sounds of wind and insect calls. In New Mexico a series of frescoes accompanied the installation, each a notation to the project.
In 2018 Maciá won the Golden Pear at the fifth annual Art and Olfaction Awards in London for his experimental work with scent. He was awarded the Prize for the presentation of “Under the Horizon” at Sala San Antonio Abad – Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Gran Canaria, Spain. The smell composition of “Under the Horizon” draws from the scent of organisms growing under the earth, while employing sculptural conventions and narrative expectations. A plinth elevates a bath to eye level where the taps are constantly running unchecked, filling the tub with a black liquid holding the scent of ‘under’, accompanied by the sounds of cloth being stitched by machines, mixed with the sound of artificial rain. These recordings were made by the artist in a large Bulgarian factory, manufacturing military uniforms for different wars on our planet.
“Ten Notes for a Human Symphony” was first presented at Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece (2009), which consists of ten canvas curtains slowing moving, each impregnated with a unique scent. The artist gathered a lock of human hair that had never been chemically treated from men and women living in Argentina, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Syria and Tibet. Each was analysed in a Paris perfume laboratory using the technique known as ‘headspace.’ The result was analysed and interpreted by a senior perfumer who created a new smell, or 'note', for each sample. In 2000 Maciá was commissioned to make one of the first olfactory sculptures presented in a museum for “Continental Shift, A Voyage Between Cultures” at Ludwig Forum International Kunst Aachen, Germany. “Algae Garden” comprises 150 fragrances of flower species, fruits, and vegetables from all over the world. The installation consists of five rings that rotate once a minute; hanging from each are thirty tampons holding one of the fragrances.
In 2018-19 Maciá realised a series of sound and smell installations exploring migratory winds. Following a residency with Office for Contemporary Art Norway, hosted by Artica in Svalbard, he produced “A Gift To Svalbard,” an installation of sound, smell, light, and monoprints. The sound element collected migratory winds in different deserts around the world, calls of crosspollinating insects, the rumble of obsolete industrial machinery, and the reverberation of border fences. The olfactory component was made from roses sourced from plantations in countries that are part of the 1920 Svalbard Treaty and, alongside monoprints showed insects and flora from Svalbard.
“Something Going on Above My Head” (1995-99), an installation comprising sixteen speakers playing a symphony of two thousand birdcalls from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe, has been exhibited in nine countries – most recently at Tate Modern (2021) and Tate Britain (2016) in London. “Surrounded in Tears” (2004) has been exhibited in many museums, including Tate Liverpool (2004) and Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2011) where Maciá was awarded the prestigious first prize. Comprising twenty-two megaphones, each dedicated to a different sound channel, this sculpture is a symphony of one hundred human crying sounds sampled from different cultures and periods. Researching the sounds of tears for two years, the artist consulted recordings and references from a number of collections including ethnographic sound archives across Europe, the Freud Museum in London, the archives of the radio channel Caracol in Colombia, and he gathered the sounds of new born babies from the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. At Manifesta 9 in Belgium (2012) Maciá presented “Martinete” (2011-2012), an olfactory-acoustic sculpture he began researching for the 2011 Porto Alegre Biennial in Brazil.
Collaboration is an important part of Maciá’s artistic practice. He has a long-standing collaboration with Ricardo Moya, Senior Perfumer of International Flavors & Fragrances. “Trilogy for Three Timbres,” commissioned in 2016 by Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo Mexico, was created through a collaboration with Dr Fernando Montealegrez of University of Lincoln and the composer Edmar Soria. In 2010 Maciá worked on the opera “INXILIO el sendero de las lágrimas” with choreographer Alvaro Restrepo of El Colegio del Cuerpo, where he created the sound component. The installation for Maciá's “Surrounded in Tears,” commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial, was made in collaboration with the composer Michael Nyman and the designer Jasper Morrison. Maciá’s eight-channel sound sculpture “E2 7SD,” created with Santiago Posada of StudioAural was presented in a collaboration with choreographer Rafael Bonachela and won the inaugural Place Prize in 2004 and continues to tour internationally. Maciá worked with the filmmaker Patrick Jolley on a number of moving image installations, including “Soufflé” (2008), a twelve-screen installation based on recordings of abattoirs, and “Equilibrium” (2010), a work that starts with field recordings of completely white bats.