ASHRAF OSMAN
Ashraf Osman is a curator, critic and historian of olfactory art. He is founder-director of Scent Art Net & News, a network for the development of olfactory art, and Artinect, a consultancy that connects art and people, virtually and physically. He is also the co-founder of the Scent Culture Institute.
Ashraf conducted his postgraduate curatorial studies at the Zurich University of the Arts, where he focused on olfactory art, writing a historical overview of it in the 20th century. Before that, Ashraf worked for more than 10 years as an architect in the US, where he also taught Interdisciplinary Design Foundations at Philadelphia University. Ashraf holds degrees in architecture from Syracuse University (New York) and biology from the American University of Beirut (Lebanon).
Ashraf has recently curated a year-long olfactory exhibition series titled "Schnupperschau" at Kunstmuseum Thun in Switzerland. And he has co-written a chapter in the upcoming book, "Designing with Smell: Practices, Techniques and Challenges" (Routledge). Ashraf will be lecturing at the "Art Sense(s) Lab" master program at University College PXL-MAD Hasselt (Belgium). And he continues developing the traveling olfactory art exhibition project, "Scents of Exile," in partnership with Syndicate in Beirut and Givaudan in Dubai and Paris.
2018 marks the third year of Ashraf Osman's participation as a judge at The Art and Olfaction Awards. He will be judging the Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent.
