Karola Braga (b. 1988, São Caetano do Sul, Brazil) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice stems from olfaction as a critical, sensory, and political language. She investigates scent as a field of friction between body, memory, and power, creating experiences that span the intimate and the collective, the visible and the invisible. In her works, scent is not an ornament: it is structure, discourse, and a living presence.
She works with ancestral technologies, using natural materials such as resins, plants, smoke, ceramic and scented wax, as well as synthetic formulations, microencapsulation, polymers, and fabrics, expanding the sensorial perception of the world beyond the primacy of sight. Her production manifests across installations, sculptures, performances, and site-specific works, addressing themes such as erasure, finitude, collective memory, and the continuities between past and present. Ancestry emerges not as a fixed origin, but as a living force that traverses materials, knowledge, and practices, summoning new modes of presence.
Since 2015, she has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in institutional and independent contexts across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. She participated in Desert X AlUla (Saudi Arabia), with a work commissioned by the Royal Commission for AlUla; was part of the 13th Mercosul Biennial and the 27th Season of Projects at Paço das Artes. She was a resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), with support from FAAP, and at Kooshk Residency (Tehran), where she received the Kooshk Artist Residency Award (KARA 2018).
Winner of the Sadakichi Award for Experimental Work with Scent (2025, Los Angeles), she was nominated for the PIPA Award (2024), the CIFO Grants & Commissions Program (2020), and the Bloom Art Prize (2019).