2024
scent installation, ceramics

Everything seems to have begun thousands of years ago, after the Ice Age. Entrances to natural or man-made caves were covered with animal skins, securing spaces where fires were burned during the daytime. The burning lasted several hours, filling the space with smoke. As it began to settle, people and animals would enter the cave-turned-sauna. During cold nights, their bodies were warmed by hot stones – when water was poured over them, billows of cleansing, healing steam were released. The warm caverns drew entire families, across all generations, usually naked to make the purification complete.

The cave was simultaneously heated by the warm stones and sterilised by the smoke, which transformed it into the focal point of human life. It served as a kitchen, laundry, hospital, and, in winter, as a home. People were born and died in saunas – the epicentre of social and spiritual life.

Over time, in many cultures, healing smoke took on a magical role. Burning resinous, tarry plants, drying them and preserving resins, powdering and forming them into cones, sticks, and other shapes became a symbol of celebration in the rites of all religions.

Some Room invites festival-goers to bathe in the smoke. Incense made from plants collected in Niedźwiednik – pine cones, buds, and needles, dog roses, and roots of the marshmallow plant – burns in face urns inspired by those from the early Iron Age of Pomeranian culture.

The smoke blends Niedźwiednik’s rich history and precious natural resources: incense burnt by Cistercian monks who arrived here in the twelfth century and the healing, purifying smoke of the original sauna.

KAJA DOMIŃSKA is a sensorist and perfume creator. She designs personal perfumes and olfactory settings for artistic and cultural events. Domińska is fascinated by scents, incense, and saunas – how they intertwine, coexist and result from one another, and the role they play in people’s health practices and spiritual life.

WOJTEK GAWROŃSKI is an author of visual objects, graphic designer, electronic music producer, and fan of second-hand shops. He is interested in debris and everything transformed into rubble – the old, the recovered, the multilayered, and the mysterious: everyday objects, architecture, clothes, and sounds.