76. Scent of the Black Stone | Artworks

Stacked up in all our wonderful and inviting colours, shapes and sizes, we’re here to welcome you to your future. After you’ve finished the Hajj, which you’ll do as your purest self – no perfume, make-up or colour – you’ll be ready to bathe in the scents of Mecca. Choose between the Ka’aba perfume, the Scent of the Gods, the Holy Scent, or the Scent of the Black Stone, and douse it all over you. Our perfume is so powerful that you might be relieved when after an hour or so nothing remains but the odour of your own skin and sweat.

This work transcends the objects. Ultimately, what I’m working with isn’t only the artefacts themselves, but the stories attached to them. For me, each tale is the manifestation of the object, and each object is a tangible materialisation of an underlying narrative. The work finds its equilibrium somewhere between the stories and chronology they’re chaptered into, the objects becoming knots or points along the timeline, woven into stories as part of the language of this artwork. Each story draws out a tale that intends to trigger imagination and memory, mixing fact with fiction, with the ultimate aim of straddling, conflating and confusing fixed notions of history to open up the unofficial histories that shape the character of place and memory.
Ahmed Mater
2014