Gayil Nalls

In the 1982 exhibition curated by Lee Fleming, Washington Iconoclassicism, at Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC and Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL, Ms. Fleming wrote in the catalog that Nalls creates, “decidedly unpastoral visions.” Saying further that: “Placing human objects under the fierce heat of Modernism, she creates situations which pose the fragility of human effort and decoration (including art) against the forbidding façade of passing ideal.”[20] While Nalls continues to work across several media, her artistic practice has grown progressively more conceptual over the course of her career.

She is best known for her olfactory sculpture, World Sensorium'[21]', an ongoing project that premiered at the Times Square 2000 millennial celebration in New York City.

[29] For the Times Square 2000 millennial celebration, the “world scent”, as it is described by Nalls, dropped over the crowd at midnight on specially-designed, microencapsulated paperworks.

In 2012, Nalls exhibited The Smell of a Critical Moment, a project which investigated the unique role of chemical communication within participants of Occupy Wall Street––the odors that carry information that influences human emotions, behavior and judgments, as well as our sense of beauty.

In 2016, she co-curated a public forum, exhibition and screening of her interview series Exceptional Voices at El Barrio ArtSpace in New York.