Praying to the Gods
by Persephenie
On View: March 28 – April 24, 2026
Opening Event:
Saturday March 28, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
RSVP to opening
The Institute for Art and Olfaction is pleased to welcome Los Angeles-based artist and perfumer Persephenie, in her second solo exhibition at IAO Gallery.
In Praying to the Gods, artist Persephenie brings together plants, scent, incense, and self-portraiture to explore reverence through the body. The work treats plants and lived experience as something alive, encountered through smell, awareness, and closeness.
With elements placed low to the ground and along the walls, viewers must lower themselves to engage. Kneeling, looking, and smelling become acts of attention and vulnerability, making reverence something embodied rather than abstract.
Persephenie’s first exhibition at the IAO Gallery—Talisman: Meditations— was presented in March 2024. Learn more about it here.
About Persephenie
Persephenie specializes in perfumery and incense with expertise on natural materials.
She opened her aromatic studio in 2004, and has been teaching scent related classes since 2006.
Inspired by aromatic history and antiquated approaches, Persephenie enjoys researching recipes from different cultures, reinterpreting them, using stellar raw materials.
Persephenie is influenced by Medieval Middle Eastern Perfumery, Incense History, California Health and Well Being, the early West Coast Natural Perfumery movement, and Traditional Indian Attar manufacturing in Kanauj, India. Her perfumes are transportive, earthy, complex, strongly characteristic, with a high ratio of precious natural materials from different parts of the world.