What is the role of perfumes in the creation and discrimination of identities and how is their creation connected to a novel relation between aesthetics and ethics?

Growing up as a Tamil immigrant in Germany, my skin marked me as Other. Beyond the visual however, I witnessed how smells were utilized to discriminate against those deemed different, either by their ethnicity, gender identity or presumed class.

Simultaneously, the process of making culture and identity "ephemeral" has fascinated me ever since I bought my first perfume. For the first time in my life, I felt unbound by assessments of who I was and felt both space and time shift in my ability to scent myself and relate to the olfactory worlds created by perfumers.