The Flair Prize for Olfactory Art

The Flair Prize for Olfactory Art is a support scheme dedicated to the creation, research, and dissemination of artistic projects that integrate olfaction as a central medium.
Founded in 2021, the Flair Prize aims to support the development of a field that remains largely marginalized in the history of Western art: olfactory art and, more broadly, multimodal artistic practices that engage the sense of smell.
Led by Flair, an independent perfumers’ studio, the prize is rooted in an approach that is at once artistic, scientific, and patrimonial.

Why a prize for olfactory art?

Historically, the sense of smell has been underrepresented in Western artistic institutions, due to cultural, technical, museographic, and archival constraints.
Within the field of contemporary art, many artists have incorporated olfaction into their practices since the early twentieth century, yet these works have struggled to find a full place within institutional circuits, owing to their material instability, the challenges of their preservation, and their limited compatibility with conventional exhibition formats.
The Flair Prize emerged from this observation: without a dedicated framework, these practices remain invisible, poorly documented, and insufficiently supported.