Mina Alikhani’s Synesthesia Dissolves the Boundary Between Art and Sensation
An immersive exploration conceived by the artist in collaboration with Maddox Gallery invites visitors to experience surrealist landscapes through sight, sound, scent, taste and touch. On 18 November, three intimate sessions will transform how we perceive and encounter art.
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The gallery has long been a space of visual contemplation, a sanctum where the eye leads and the other senses remain dormant. Mina Alikhani and Maddox Gallery challenge this convention with Synesthesia, an immersive exploration that reconceives the entire apparatus of aesthetic experience. What emerges is something far more profound than a conventional exhibition: a sensory symphony where colour, form and composition speak not only to the eye but to the palate, the nose, the ear and the fingertips.
Alikhani’s surrealist landscapes serve as the foundation for this radically reconsidered encounter. Her canvases, rendered in the dreamlike vocabulary of the surreal, become portals to multisensory territories. Through meticulously considered pairings of scent, sound, taste and texture, the artist has constructed a dialogue between her visual language and the deeper architectures of human perception. Each element has been selected with deliberate grace, designed to heighten rather than overwhelm, to illuminate rather than obscure.
The installation unfolds across three intimate sessions on 18 November, each crafted to maintain the contemplative quality essential to genuine aesthetic experience. This restraint in scale and visitor numbers speaks to a fundamental principle: that immersion need not be cacophonous, that profundity often dwells in quietude and intention. The interactive elements invite participation without demanding performance, allowing each visitor to compose their own sensory narrative within the framework Alikhani has so carefully constructed.
The Alchemy of Perception
At its heart, Synesthesia addresses a question that has preoccupied artists and philosophers: how do our senses collaborate in the construction of meaning. By bringing these channels into deliberate conversation, Alikhani dissolves the artificial hierarchy that has traditionally placed vision at the apex of aesthetic experience. Sound carries weight and memory. Scent opens chambers of association long forgotten. Touch grounds abstraction into physical reality. Taste adds a dimension of intimacy and surrender. Together, they form a language far richer than any single sensory channel could articulate alone.
The work demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how art functions beyond the visual plane. In our contemporary moment, when so much experience is filtered through screens and mediated by distance, Synesthesia offers something increasingly rare: genuine proximity, authentic encounter, the possibility of being truly present within a space designed with rigorous intentionality.
Maddox Gallery, situated in Shepherd Market, becomes the vessel for this ambitious vision. The venue itself, steeped in London’s artistic heritage, provides an appropriate sanctuary for an exhibition that honours tradition whilst reaching toward something altogether more expansive and transformative.
Imagery courtesy of Maddox Gallery (@maddoxgallery).
