Katie Paterson
United Kingdom b.1981

To Burn, Forest, Fire 2021
Bespoke incense sticks
Originally commissioned by IHME Helsinki, 2021

Wafts of incense transport us across the vastness of evolutionary time in Katie Paterson’s To Burn, Forest, Fire 2021. Two small incense sticks – one marking the first-ever forest; the other an imagined last-ever forest in a future stage of the climate crisis – conjure the spirits of dead forests via a sensory experience. Paterson worked with a team of researchers to determine the perfume of each forest, drawing on scientific knowledge about the evolution of life on Earth.

The first forest’s smell is described by the artist as resembling ‘swampy decay’ and takes its cue from a petrified North American forest dating from the Devonian period 385 million years ago. Its fragrance notes are shaped by the prehistoric ferns, algae, fungi and early invertebrate insect life which predated sweeter-smelling flowers and vegetation. The last forest’s aroma contains sweet and bitter scents ranging ‘from the alcoholic fizz of guava trees to the fresh peanut-like aroma of the Earth’. Its characteristics hail from an Amazonian rainforest, selected because its biodiversity offers some resilience against climate change.

Each morning, as the gallery opens, the incense fragrances are released during a ceremonial offering under the Bodhi Tree outside GOMA’s front entrance.