Juxtaposing the Senses at the Hôtel de la Marine
- Neela Cathelain
- 2 minutes ago
- 6 min read
At the historic Parisian edifice on the Place de la Concorde, a new exhibit does something radical — it treats perfume as an art in itself.
On a gloriously sunny September afternoon, I went to the Hôtel de la Marine — a large, recently renovated, neoclassical building in the center of Paris, overlooking Place de la Concorde and its gold-capped obelisk (also known as the site where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined). The Hôtel de la Marine displays the Al Thani collection in regular thematic exhibits — a collection which boasts thousands of artworks, artifacts, and jewelry pieces. The latest, entitled “Seven Heavenly Senses,” is an exhibit curated by art historian Olivier Berggruen. I was drawn by its premise: it was the first time an Al Thani exhibit juxtaposed contemporary and ancient artworks, and it focused on the seven senses. Besides the five senses we all know about, the exhibit also puts forward two others: the vestibular sense (balance and movement) and proprioception (the ability of the body to perceive its own position in space).
Headphones on, accompanied by music composed by artist Zsela for the exhibit, I entered a room filled with garlands of golden flowers hanging vertically from the ceiling and surrounding the artworks like butterflies. Shining over a black background, those minuscule flowers created an agreeable feeling of suspension. This room seemed to function as an antechamber, meant to destabilize our sense of scale — indeed, the works of art were minuscule too: small scenes and portraits (in watercolor or enamel on copper), melancholic gazes and porcelain skin. A basket offered chocolates to enhance the experience and awaken the senses.
A perfume diffuser was placed at the entrance of the second room — or, rather, a corridor leading to the largest room, thus marking our passage into another space. This configuration turned perfume into an experience of transition; the etymology of perfume alludes to such a passage, through the smoke. A reminder, too, that scent always informs our sense of place and time, and compartmentalizes our memories. The perfume chosen to highlight this passage was Jean-Claude Ellena’s 2023 perfume Heaven Can Wait for the brand Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle.
If, like me, you associate the phrase “heaven can wait” with the film by Lubitsch — whimsical, colorful (Gene Tierney’s hypnotizing eyes!), nostalgic — you might be surprised: Ellena’s perfume is powdery, soothing, impressionistic, airy. The iris infuses the perfume with melancholia, but it is also a comfortable, timeless scent in its powderiness, as the intensity of cloves finds itself suspended by musks and the harmonious blend of ambrette and carrot seeds. I later got a sample from the Frédéric Malle store, and tried it directly on my skin: at first whiff, a burst of iris, almost plasticky; then, cloves and vetiver quickly overtook the iris and gave it an ethereal quality. The drydown on my skin was very much centered on cloves and a hint of nutmeg, as if I had just crushed spices for my daily cup of masala chai, but it never turned Christmas-y. It was cold, rather, and sharp, elegant, meditative, and made me think of being on a plane, breathing its dry recycled air, suspended in a sea of white-gray clouds.
In the corridor, my eyes fell on Monocarp by Eli Ping, a white, lanky, aerial structure made of canvas and resin; next to Monocarp’s delicate silhouette, Salman Toor’s 2019 oil painting entitled After Party showed three characters in a drunken embrace, and one man sitting on the floor next to them, scrolling on his phone. Toor’s characteristic greens filled the scene with melancholia — his work focuses on queer South Asian characters and their experiences of collective spaces, solitude, and new or renewed forms of community.
The corridor was still imbued with a sense of suspension and opened on the largest room of the exhibit, a space of juxtapositional aesthetics in its seemingly haphazard arrangement of objects, contemporary paintings, and ancient, intricate statuettes and glassware. The sense of taste also reappeared in a striking painting of a family eating together — a non-estheticized meal, focused on the material, primal act of feeding oneself and others.
The works of American contemporary artist Naudline Pierre — a triptych and a large painting — left a lasting impression. Those two paintings managed to capture the eeriness of dreams, the wonder and horror of their unpredictable composition. The triptych, entitled In the After (2025), was an altar piece commissioned by the exhibit and showed reddish-orange winged beings in movement, inspired by medieval iconography, both angelic and demonic.
Close by, round sandstone accretions (called “gogottes,” often found in the Fontainebleau forest) were also a reminder of the formal beauty of natural structures, and their eerie resemblance to abstract, manmade sculptures. The last piece in the exhibit was the picture of a multicolored curtain, at the end of a corridor, bringing us back to the first room, parallel to the entrance through the invisible curtain of perfume.
Other exhibits have fruitfully showcased perfumes and collaborated with olfactive studios to diffuse scents (without turning the space into a migraine-inducing cloud of smells). My favorite one is “Parfums d’Orient” at the Institut du monde arabe in 2023-2024, which gave an overview of different scent categories and their geographical and cultural origins in the Arabic world, but also featured original creations by Christopher Sheldrake (the perfumer behind many Serge Lutens fragrances). By comparison, the one Ellena perfume in this exhibit was a bit of a disappointment. And yet, perfume was omnipresent in the Hôtel de la Marine; our exploration of the apartments was accompanied by the cozy scent of Carine Roitfeld candles, which were juxtaposed with contemporary interior design pieces. Those pieces were part of Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau’s installation entitled “Labyrinth,” in collaboration with several artists and brands. The Hôtel de la Marine also boasts another olfactive experience created by Chantal Sanier, in which seemingly innocuous scented artworks associate specific scents to different spaces within the Hôtel.
On the balcony overlooking the Place de la Concorde, part of the “Labyrinth” installation, featured “C & Cx”: large stone seats mounted on a square wooden base, created by Antoine Bouillot and Marc-Antoine Barrois, inspired by the beaches of Belle-Île-en-mer. This particular collaboration between Barrois and Bouillot, entitled “Mission Aldebaran,” was first presented in April 2025 at Milan Design Week and functioned as a journey through darkness towards the luminous aura of Aldebaran, a tuberose perfume whose namesake is one of the brightest stars we can see. Next to the stones, a QR code link told us to head out of the Hôtel de la Marine and claim a 10ml bottle of Aldebaran, the latest perfume by Marc-Antoine Barrois. His store was only five minutes away, in a neighborhood where one can find the highest concentration of niche perfumery brands in Paris (new stores are set to open this fall on rue Saint-Honoré, including Maison Crivelli).
Aldebaran, created by Quentin Bisch in 2025 for designer Marc-Antoine Barrois, is an original (and polarizing) take on an elegant, creamy tuberose, with a bit of an edge, i.e. paprika and mate, which both spice up and soften the fragrance; its floral and slightly medicinal exuberance is toned down, and the scent becomes less sensual, slightly earthy and leathery. I had already smelled paprika in a floral fragrance, Paprika Brasil (incidentally, a Jean-Claude Ellena creation, a little reminiscent of Heaven Can Wait in its focus on iris and cloves, but much more powdery, rounder and softer), and the spice seemed to have the same role: it made the scent less fluffy, and gave it substance — a hint of gravitas. If tuberose can feel sunny, sexy, and a little bubble-gummy, Aldebaran’s tuberose is like dappled sunlight in the woods, as summer ends and the air starts to cool. Bisch had already created beautiful tuberose and white flower fragrances (Tubéreuse Astrale by Maison Crivelli, or Fleur Narcotique by Ex Nihilo), but also often ventures into spicy and woody territory — my favorite of his is the cistus-centered Attaquer le Soleil by Etat Libre d’Orange, which came out in 2016, the same year as B683, his first of seven creations for Marc-Antoine Barrois.
The market of niche perfumery may seem simultaneously oversaturated and constantly renewing itself with unexpected combinations of notes and accords — but even if I’m always on the hunt for new exciting olfactory creations, I gained a different appreciation for the peaceful and introspective atmosphere of the Hôtel de la Marine, its golden galleries scented with candles, hinting that perfume can be architecture.
The sense of smell is primal, uniquely able to bring us back to a forgotten past, to reorient our bodies, displace us, and make us experience transitory states. The exhibit left me eager to discover new transdisciplinary explorations of scents and visual or musical art forms — for now, I’ll keep exploring more niche perfumery stores, where mass appeal meets the weird and the conceptual, and where a few droplets can conjure up unexpected memories or reconfigure perception itself. 🌀
Neela Cathelain is a writer, critic, and translator based in Paris.