The Magnetic Residencies artistic committee met on September 24, 2024, and selected artist Racheal Crowther for a residency at Bétonsalon as part of the 3rd edition of this program.
Racheal Crowther will be in residence at Bétonsalon for 2 months, from March to April 2024. She will receive a grant of €2,500 per month, accommodation at the Centre international d’échanges des Récollets, a workspace and curatorial support from the Bétonsalon team, as well as networking opportunities with art professionals to develop her research.

The residency project

Racheal Crowther is interested in the biopolitics that govern the public and private spaces we inhabit, and that constitute their physical and psychological boundaries. She explores the social constructions that underlie the material functions of these spaces, drawing on the social, commercial and institutional environments in which she herself has evolved.

In her essay The Eternal Pursuit of the Unattainable (Montez Press, 2024), Racheal Crowther looks at the different uses and representations of perfume, from poison to counterfeit, and its power to influence consumer psychology. She demonstrates how the marketing of perfumes exploits the human yearning for something beyond the ordinary, and explores the issues linked to the socio-economic level that determines access to them, the expression of the gender identities that underpin them, and the history of the acquisition of olfactory materials.

During her residency at Bétonsalon, she hopes to deepen her research into olfactory materials by studying the way in which odours are used to influence mood and behaviour, based on studies at the ISIPCA (Institut Supérieur International du Parfum, de la Cosmétique et de l’Aromatique alimentaire) and the olfactory archives of the Osmothèque de Versailles, the largest conservatory of perfumes in the world.