The Apocalypse Project: The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store Favorite 

As climate change worsens, so will our collective sense of loss. Coastlines, cities, crops, and entire species will disappear. Artist Catherine Young has created a perfume line that bottles up the scents of things we enjoy today, but will be diminished–or gone–soon enough. During exhibitions, visitors are allowed to smell the perfumes. As smell and memory are closely related, viewers are invited to reflect on how potentially losing these scents could affect their lives and hopefully be inspired to preserve them and take action on the climate crisis.

Called The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store (T.E.M.P.S., which is French for “time”), the perfume line consists of eight scents: Coasts, Coffee, Honey, Wine, Eucalyptus, Peanuts, Ice, and Hardwood trees. All of the scents were created in partnership with Givaudan, a Swiss flavors and fragrance company with a commitment to environmental sustainability.

Young told the company what scents she wanted and the feelings she hoped to evoke, and they did the rest. Ice, for example, was actually a scent that Givaudan already had in its lab. “They gave me different forms of wine and peanuts, I had to choose which ones I wanted for the project,” says Young.

T.E.M.P.S is part of Young’s solo exhibition, The Apocalypse Project, at the Mind Museum in the Philippines. The scents are available to smell at the museum, but can’t be purchased.

In addition to the exhibitions, the narrative surrounding the perfume store was added to a literary collaborative project titled "Our Entangled Future: Stories to Empower Quantum Social Change" (released 2019). The nine short stories presented in Our Entangled Future are rooted in the complex reality of the climate crisis. Rather than painting a dystopic future, they present agency-driven characters whose insights will inspire readers to contemplate and realize the potential for quantum social change. The story of The Ephemeral Marvels Perfume Store revolves around a female perfumer who lives in a future time when climate change has eradicated a lot of scents and she tries to preserve as many of these as possible. One day, she receives a knock on a door from a client who searches for her to create a perfume that has not been smelled in a very long time.