NADA Curated by Micky Schubert

Chaveli Sifre is a Puerto Rican artist based in Berlin. Sifre’s work centers on healing practices, the sense of smell, botany, and the belief systems constructed around them. Interested in intersensorial entanglement as knowledge production, Sifre creates installations, scents, paintings, and performative rituals that recover the long-lost intersections between science, spirituality, scent, medicine, magic, and care.

“Smoke Compositions | Tabonuco and Camphor” is a ritual sculpture that invites us to consider the transformative power of smoke and its role in cleansing practices. The sculpture incorporates tabonuco, a native resin of Puerto Rico used by the Tainos to light up torches, and camphor, a substance commonly used in Caribbean practices of cleanse known as “la limpia,” into the incense blend. As smoke rises from the censer, it evokes the potent power of smoke in cleansing rituals across cultures, from the burning of sage in Native American traditions to the use of incense in Catholic and Buddhist practices.