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.