Founder and Executive Director
French by upbringing, Cuban and English by parentage, and American by birth, Saskia Wilson-Brown obtained her BA at UC Berkeley, and her MA (Fine Art) at Central Saint Martins College in London.
She started her career in music video art department – from PA to production designer – for people like Madonna, Marilyn Manson and hip-hop don Master P. She went on to join the board and eventually serve as festival co-director for Los Angeles’ seminal Silver Lake Film Festival, launching the festival’s visionary new media arm in 2005 (MP4Fest) in addition to curating many of its film, art and music events. In 2007 Saskia was hired at Al Gore’s Current TV to head the newly formed filmmaker outreach & development department. There, she and her team conceived of and spearheaded projects designed to gain new short format documentary content for the network from international filmmakers, while initiating content partnerships on a global scale. She also participated in the production of Emmy-nominated shows like ‘TV Free Burning Man‘.
She went on to work as an independent producer and a film distribution strategist, while producing events around new open-access models in the arts (including the Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit, several of Lance Weiler’s DIY Days events, and the TEDActive Innovation Lab ). She also curated and produced programs such as the bienial art/film extravaganza ‘Ultra Fabulous Beyond Drag’ (2007, 2009), ‘Cuban Revolutionary Film’ (for Casa Del Tunel in Tijuana, 2010), and Cinema Speakeasy, an independent screening series she founded and ran from 2009 to 2012. Further projects and pursuits included programming feature documentaries and serving as a shorts juror for Slamdance Film Festival; while serving as film juror, advisor and/or panelist for organizations ranging from Gen Art to IFP.
In 2012, her interest in experimental practices and open access led her to found The Institute for Art and Olfaction, a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization devoted to experimentation, access and cross-media projects with a focus on scent. As head of the IAO, she has led the organization from an idea to a fully fledged institution, devoted to serving the general public and independent perfume industry alike, while forging and maintaining relationships with institutions including Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Getty Center, Goethe Institut, Hammer Museum, Wallace Collection, and many more. In 2013 – drawing from her experience with film festivals – she created and launched one of the IAO’s flagship programs: The Art and Olfaction Awards, an international, blindly-judged awards mechanism for independent and artisan perfumers, and experimental practitioners with scent.
In addition to countless art installations and events, she has also produced large public-facing experimental programs relating to olfaction including the Biennial Scent Fair LA (with Darin Klein) and the annual Experimental Scent Summit (with Klara Ravat), a multi-year exploration of open source strategies in scent-making, and a perfume garden servicing the Bell Homeless Shelter in Los Angeles in partnership with GrowGood.
A committed advocate of open information and education in the arts, Saskia’s writing has appeared in independent publications such as Filmmaker Magazine, Getty Iris, Nez Magazine and Perfumer & Flavorist. She’s been invited to speak at a number of institutions, conferences and festivals including World Perfumery Congress, SxSW, Sundance, Wallace Collection, Getty Institute, Otis College, Eindhoven Design Academy, Royal College of Art, Art Center College of Design, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, New Mexico Highlands University, DIY Days, Open Video Conference, Power to the Pixel, amongst others. Her film work has been shown at TED Conference (2010) and at dOCUMENTA (2012), and her visual art work has been shown at institutions such as Dom Omladine in Belgrade and the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires.
In 2019 and 2020, Saskia was a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London, teaching about scent-making as a creative practice in the MA Fashion program. In March of 2020, when Covid-19 made travel and in-person events impossible, she spearheaded a quick launch of an online division of the Institute for Art and Olfaction. Through artandolfaction.online, the Institute for Art and Olfaction (IAO) team and collaborating teachers served just over 600 people from diverse locations around the world, within the first 30 days. This allowed the IAO to continue its mission to facilitate access to the tools and information of perfumery, while reaching an even wider audience through increasingly affordable, well-researched and authentic online education.
In 2020 and 2022, she was invited as a Ballen Scholar at New Mexico Highlands University, and in 2023 she launched the pandemic-delayed Scent Week, a biennial week-long festival of smell for Los Angeles. Saskia’s current projects include producing a radio show/podcast called Perfume on the Radio, while pursuing a PhD about the relationship between perfume, access and power at University College Dublin’s SmartLab.
Contact: saskia [at] artandolfaction.com