2024–ongoing
Video installation, hydrosols, textile, object
White Gold takes asparagus as both a material and a metaphor. While considered a delicacy in the West, asparagus alters bodily scent, making it a potent metaphor for how bodies are regulated and classified as either acceptable or intrusive. Beyond its symbolism, asparagus is materially linked to seasonal migrant labor. Every year, thousands of Eastern European workers harvest the crop, labor that remains largely invisible to the societies consuming it.
This dynamic is underscored by the history of seasonal labor in Europe, most visibly illustrated during the 2020 lockdowns, when closed borders were temporarily opened to transport Romanian seasonal workers to Western fields to pick asparagus. The project approaches these geopolitical frictions as a backdrop for examining how the migrant body is valued.
White Gold unfolds across three distinct episodes focused on attempts to create an asparagus-based perfume using different methods of extraction. Episode I (2024/25), filmed at ZK/U Berlin and the agricultural fields of Beelitz, Germany, with Vangjush Vellahu and Tristan Nicolas, documents a process of scent extraction alongside a conversation about the two participants’ shared experiences of living in Germany. Episode II (2025/26), filmed in Rotterdam with Marta Hryniuk, shifts the focus toward what remains unseen: the physical energy expended, the warmth transferred, and the body’s imprint during the act of extraction. Episode III is a forthcoming installment scheduled for future production.
Treating this ongoing process as a site of reflection, the work highlights how scent moves beneath language, clings to skin, and lingers in the air. It recalls, unsettles, and disturbs. In a culture oriented around sight and sound, smell offers an intimate and often unconscious form of knowledge, one which shapes how bodies are policed or consumed.
A first iteration of White Gold was exhibited at Indecis Artist-Run Space between 2–20 October 2025. Photos by Andrei Infinit.
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.
