Maria Candida Gentile: Author Perfume as Artistic Research

Maria Candida Gentile, an internationally renowned perfumer, discusses her practice in an interview with Artribune. Born in Sarzana and raised between Liguria and Valle d'Aosta, she grew up surrounded by botanical and herbal traditions. Her training in Grasse, France, provided her with technical rigor in perfume composition. Gentile views perfume as a creative language that activates memory and imagination, moving beyond mere product to artistic research. She has collaborated with contemporary artists such as Luca Vitone and Pamela Rosenkranz on olfactory artworks where scent becomes a perceptual device. In the interview, she explains that her creative process begins with inspiration—a place, person, artwork, or emotion—followed by a period of listening and journaling before selecting natural raw materials. She favors cistus labdanum, helichrysum, sandalwood, violet leaf, tuberose, and osmanthus, and rejects synthetic notes for their distorting effect on perception. Gentile discusses how certain scents, like helichrysum and magnolia, help transform difficult memories into something lighter. She critiques the fast-paced perfume market focused on performance and immediate recognition, advocating for a slower creative process that can educate perception and create new desires. Her work in contemporary art contexts allows perfume to disturb, question, and evoke places and absences. The interview was conducted by Federica Bianconi and published in September 2026.