2024–ongoing
Video installation, hydrosols, textile, object
White Gold takes asparagus as both material and metaphor. Its history, its scent, and the traces it leaves on the body reveal wider systems of power and extraction. Following the pathways of this single crop, the work asks: what becomes visible or stays hidden when value and labour meet at a sensory level?
Scent moves beneath language, clings to skin, lingers in the air. It recalls, unsettles, and disturbs. In a culture oriented around sight and sound, smell offers another kind of knowledge, intimate, immediate, often unconscious, shaping how bodies are sensed, policed, or consumed. White Gold unfolds as an episodic exploration of trials and failures in the pursuit of an asparagus-based perfume. Each episode centres on a different method of scent extraction, treating the process itself as a site of reflection and encounter.
The project comprises three episodes. The first, filmed in Berlin with Vangjush Vellahu (AL) and Tristan Nicolas (RO), documents an attempt at extraction that opens into a conversation about their shared experiences of living in Germany. The second, filmed in Rotterdam with Marta Hryniuk, shifts toward what remains unseen: the energy expended, the warmth transferred, and the body’s imprint within the act of extraction. The third episode will begin filming next year.
A first iteration of White Gold was shown at Indecis Artist-Run Space between 2–20 October 2025. Photos by Andrei Infinit.
White Gold I
2024–2025
Video, 24 min 35 sec
With Tristan Nicolas and Vangjush Vellahu
Filmed at ZK/U Berlin and Beelitz (DE)
White Gold II (in production)
2025
Video, 7 min 27 sec
Filmed by Marta Hryniuk
Filmed at Mensa Mensa (NL)
Special thanks: ZKU Berlin, Constança Viegas Martins, Anita Rind, Radu Sticlă, Oli Grandi, Mensa Mensa, Esther Matze, Martin Krafft, Ella Barclay, Mimi Ciora, Gavril Pop, and Indecis Space.
Works were produced with the financial assistance of the European Union through the Goethe-Institut, Mondriaan Fonds, and Energie! Creative Grants, awarded by the City of Timișoara through the Center for Projects.
ari david 