A couple years ago, I lost my sense of smell. When it came back, it was wired to my brain all wrong.
Cigarettes smelled like palo santo, flowers smelled like oatmeal, coffee smelled like moldy socks. Burnt toast at a friend’s house turned out to be a wet dog. The subway was honeysuckle; oregano was a pile of sweet garbage rotting on a summer day. Here are the things that smelled like roadkill:
chocolate
cauliflower lasuni
cookies
smell of bodega on 4th pl
kale
arugula
mint
flavored seltzer
passionfruit
smell of bodega on Degraw
green tea
peanuts/peanut butter
hazelnuts
onions (especially raw)
cherry coke
tomatoes
basil
cilantro
half and half
butter
wasabi peas
mangoes
mango licorice
food cooking
anything charred/crisped
rain
wet dog
smell of Brooklyn Habit
orange gatorade
black pepper
smell of Dunkin Donuts
smell of Mazzolla
okay every coffee shop
coffee ughhhhhhh
You may have noticed that I make work for eyes, ears, etc. That I make work in theaters and notebooks and galleries, in collaboration with creatures animate and inanimate. You may have been like, “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff! But what about the nose? Why doesn’t she make work for the nose?”
Well, now you know. You know why my plays, films, stories, and drawings are not in smell-o-vision - why they rely so fully on sight-o-vision and sound-o-hearing.
I hope you’ll spend some time with them and tell me what you think. You can drop me a line at tsukerman.yuliya@gmail.com, or follow me on Instagram @yeahliya.
THINGS
My work has been performed at St. Ann's Warehouse, The Brick, Nouveau 47, and the Actors Studio Drama School.
I've been awarded residencies at St. Ann's Warehouse (2012 and 2020), the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Women’s Work Short Play Lab, and Mana Contemporary.
My short films have screened in festivals around the world - in the U.S., Japan, France, Germany, and Colombia.
I've been featured on CNN and MSN, and online at places like Slate, Gizmodo, and the A.V. Club.