Nostalgia is more than just an emotion; it is a unique sense of time. It arrives suddenly, in flashes. A song from your youth, the scent of someone’s perfume, or the feel of a familiar fabric can each open an unexpected door to the past.

In these moments, nostalgia wraps around us like a soft blanket, shielding us from the pains of the present. It feels gentle, almost comforting, but its pull can be strong. It invites us to linger, to forget the present, and to pause between ‘then’ and ‘now,’ holding onto our most cherished memories.

If Sounds Were Smells features five artists who see nostalgia not as a romantic feeling, but as a condition shaped by displacement, childhood, family, and shared culture. Instead of simply showing memory, these works treat it as something architectural, something that exists both around us and within us.

Inspired by the look of an Imperial Panorama, as described by W. Benjamin in his childhood memories, the exhibition space is submerged in darkness, with only the artworks highlighted by spotlights or projectors. The design matches the nature of the works, which all exist like fleeting memories, forms in the artist’s hands.

In her series on Tagveti—the “village of the mice”— Natela Grigalashvili’s (b. 1965, Khashuri, Georgia) forms a personal archive of a home slowly emptied by time and circumstance. The village becomes quieter, neighbours leave, houses collapse into ruins, and childhood takes on the shape of something both real and unreachable. Her images do not sensationalise loss, but they remain attentive to its weight. What disappears does not vanish completely; it lingers, and her work gives it a face.

Do Ho Suh (b. 1962, Seoul, South Korea) explores this lingering through reconstruction. His practice is rooted in homesickness and moving, and in the idea that home can be carried and rebuilt, even if it cannot be returned to in the same way. By recreating corridors, rooms, thresholds, and details from his former homes, Suh makes memory tangible. These works feel both precise and fragile, familiar yet out of reach.

Evelyn Tan (b. 2002, Vancouver) looks at childhood in a different way, seeing it not as a fixed past but as a dreamscape. Her works move through inner worlds where reality feels softer, objects seem full of meaning, and emotions matter more than facts. Here, childhood is still active and present, lingering in the mind. It is not just innocence, but a state of becoming—unfinished, changing, and a bit unreal.

Minjeong An (b. 1981, Seoul, South Korea) focuses on emotional relationships like a scientist. Her psychographs show how feelings move between people, and how tenderness, tension, distance, and closeness repeat and change. In her work, feelings take on visual form, moving from the realm of the abstract. Memory here is shared, not just internal.

Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead) places nostalgia within culture, where memory is shaped and replayed through images and sound. His work suggests that memories are shaped not just by one’s own life, but also by collective experience, media influence, youth culture, music, and dance. In his work, nostalgia similarly proves universal.

Together, these artists frame nostalgia as something delicate yet lasting. It can comfort us, but it can also keep us from moving forward. It may feel gentle, but it can still have a strong hold.

In the end, nostalgia is not the past returning.

It is the present, haunted.