Lily of the Valley Meets Banana: An Olfactory Gut Punch From Marissa Zappas

If you still think gallery scent is a gimmick, this one might change your mind. Marissa Zappas has built a four-note trap for the nose, and it tightens as you climb. On the second floor at Bernheim, you meet lily of the valley and apricot, fresh and dewy like a smile caught in flashbulbs. By the third floor, where portraits of Dorothy Stratten hang, the air is saturated, and the sweetness has been shadowed by frankincense and a sly banana that refuses to behave.

It is part of Cristine Brache’s exhibition, Centerfolds, and the scent reads like an editorial footnote to beauty myths. Lily of the valley is a classic symbol of innocence in perfumery, a note you cannot extract from nature, so perfumers conjure it from muguet molecules. Here, it rings bright and slightly brittle, the way perfection always does when you get too close. Apricot adds a sun-warmed skin vibe, thanks to lactones that hum like body heat, intimate and a little sticky.

Then comes the twist. Banana is usually playful, isoamyl-acetate-fizzy, but under gallery lights it turns uncanny, like a smile stretched a beat too long. It flirts with kitsch, then breaks your heart. Frankincense steps in with resinous gravity, a dry, sacred hush that keeps the sugar from collapsing into giggles. Together they sketch a paradox I cannot shake: innocence, offered up, then consumed.

The curation is spatial as well as olfactory. You encounter brightness first, then complexity, then full saturation with the images of Dorothy Stratten. It is a sensory arc that mirrors a conceptual one, and it makes an uncomfortable point without wagging a finger. Beauty sells. Beauty is bought. And sometimes beauty is embalmed in smoke.

As a woman who lives nose-first through culture, I am allergic to prettified tragedy. This composition resists that trap. It is not a candle with a press release. It is a living critique, built from four deceptively simple notes that swell as the stakes rise. By the time you hit the top floor, the room smells like memory you can’t scrub off, green bells, soft flesh, church air, and a ghost of banana that lingers after the lights blink out.