Jim Drobnick

Jim Drobnick is a critic, curator and Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at OCAD University, Toronto. He has published on the visual arts, performance, the senses, artists' multiples, and post-media practices in recent anthologies such as Sound Affects (2023), Olfactory Art and the Political in the Age of Resistance (2021), Designing with Smell (2017), Food and Museums (2017), L’Art Olfactif Contemporain (2015), The Multisensory Museum (2014), Senses and the City (2011), and Art, History and the Senses (2010). He has guest edited special thematic issues of Performance Research (Under the Influence, 2017), PUBLIC (Civic Spectacle, 2012) and The Senses & Society (Sensory Aesthetics, 2012). His books include the anthologies Aural Cultures (2004) and The Smell Culture Reader (2006).

He co-founded the Journal of Curatorial Studies with Jennifer Fisher (York University). The Journal is an international, peer-reviewed publication that explores the increasing relevance of curating and exhibitions and their impact on institutions, audiences, aesthetics and display culture. Inviting perspectives from visual studies, art history, critical theory, cultural studies and other academic fields, the journal welcomes a diversity of disciplinary approaches on curating and exhibitions broadly defined. By catalyzing debate and serving as a venue for the emerging discipline of curatorial studies, the Journal encourages the development of the theory, practice and history of curating, as well as the analysis of exhibitions and display culture in general. In 2025, the Journal was selected by an international jury to be one of the inaugural medalists for the Art Basel Awards in recognition of its influence in defining the direction of contemporary art, advancing critical discourse, and elevating underrepresented voices. Drobnick is also an editor at The Senses and Society, an interdisciplinary journal investigating the senses in culture, art and society. Other journals he has edited include Parachute and Public.

Drobnick's curatorial collaborative, DisplayCult, co-founded with Jennifer Fisher, organizes art exhibitions that foreground performative and multisensory projects. DisplayCult's exhibitions include Portraits as Portals (Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Windsor-Essex, and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre), Archives by Artists (Galerie UQO and the Archives of Ontario), NIGHTSENSE (Nuit Blanche, Toronto), MetroSonics (National Gallery of Canada Library), Odor Limits (Esther M. Klein Art Gallery), Listening Awry (McMaster Museum of Art), Aural Cultures (Walter Phillips Gallery), Linda Montano (Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts), reminiSCENT (FADO), Museopathy (Agnes Etherington Art Centre), Vital Signs (Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery) and CounterPoses (Oboro), among others. (www.displaycult.com)

Selected publications include:

2025 Archives, Multiples and the Research Collection, entretiens #7, extended interview with Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher, Gatineau: Galerie UQO (in English and French), 44 pp.

2024 "Inspired Experiments: Olfactory Art and Practice-Based Research," in Odor: Immaterial Sculpture, Siegen: Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, pp. 176-189 (in English and German).

2023 "Rutherford Chang: The Record Collector as Artist-Curator," Revue musicale OICRM (Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique), 10.1, special issue on "Du disque à l'œuvre/The Recording at Work, https://revuemusicaleoicrm.org/rmo-vol10-n1/rutherford-chang/, pp. 16-35.

2021 "Olfactivism: Scents in the City and Beyond," in Olfactory Art and the Political in the Age of Resistance, Gwenn-Ael Lynn and Debra Riley Parr, eds., London and New York: Bloomsbury, 76-98.

2018 ”Bottles of Art, Works of Alcohol,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 18(4), 54-70.
”Smell, Terrorism and Performance,” Performance Research, 23(4-5): Centenary Issue, edited by Richard Gough, et al., 350-356.
”Shuffling the Collection: Card Decks as Museum Interventions,” Muséologies: les cahiers d’études supérieures, special issue on La carte blanche dans les collections: une stratégie évènementielle/The Carte Blanche Approach to Collections: An Event-Driven Strategy, Geneviève Chevalier and Mélanie Boucher, eds., 9(2), 169-196 (co-author).

2017 ”Inebriationism: Alcohol, Performance, Paradox,” Performance Research, 22(6): Under the Influence, 26-42.
”Intoxicating Scenes: Alcohol and Art in the Museum,” in Food and Museums, Nina Levent and Irina D. Mihalache, eds., Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 295-313.

2016 ”Germaine Koh: Post-Performativity and Incidental Aesthetics,” in Johanna Householder and Tanya Mars, eds., Caught in the Act, Vol. 2: Performance by Canadian Women, Toronto: YYZ Books, 270-281.
“Installation Art: The Predicament of the Senses,” catalogue essay for Installations: À la Croisée des Chemins/Installations: At the Crossroads, curated by Bernard Lamarche, Quebec City: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (English and French), 128-138, 196-205.

2015 ”Smell: The Hybrid Art,” in L’Art Olfactif Contemporain, ed. Chantal Jaquet, Paris: Université Sorbonne, 173-189.
“Hadley+Maxwell: Backstage in the Phantasmagoria,” in are you experienced?, Melissa Bennett, ed., Hamilton: Art Gallery of Hamilton and London: Black Dog Publishing, 24-37 (co-author).
”Curating the City: Collectioneering and the Affects of Display,” in Celina Jeffery, ed., The Artist as Curator, Bristol: Intellect, 151-175 (co-author).

2014 ”The Museum as Smellscape,” in The Multisensory Museum: A Cross-disciplinary Perspective on Multiple Modalities of a Museum Experience, Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, eds., Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 177-196.
“Mock Excursions and Twisted Itineraries: Tour Guide Performances,” in Chantal Pontbriand, ed., Parachute: The Anthology, Vol. II: Performance and Performativity, Zurich: JRP Ringier, 110-121.

2013 ”To ‘Feel Breathing’: Duchamp and the Immaterial Aesthetics of Scent,” in Sascha Bru, David Ayers, Benedikt Hjartarson and Anne Reverseau, eds., European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, Volume 3: The Aesthetics of Matter. Modernism, the Avant-Garde and Material Exchange, Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 275-289.

2011 ”The City, Distilled,” in Senses and the City, edited by Madalina Diaconu, Eva Heuberger, Ruth Mateus-Berr, and Lukas Marcel Vosicky, Berlin/Vienna: Lit Verlag, 257-275.

2010 ”Airchitecture: Guarded Breaths and the [cough] Art of Ventilation,” in Art History and the Senses: 1830 to the Present, Patrizia di Bello and Gabriel Koureas, eds., London: Ashgate, 147-166.

2009 “Sense and reminiSCENT: Performance and the Essences of Memory,” Canadian Theatre Review 137, Winter, 6-12.
”Body Events and Implicated Gazes,” Performance Research, special issue “On Appearance,” 13(4), 64-74.

2008 “Simon Starling: The Entangled Life of Things,” Switch 1: 1, Winter, 4-5.
“Sonic Intimidation: Santiago Sierra’s El Degüello,” One Hour Empire, Fall, adaptation from the catalogue essay in Listening Awry, 72-76.
“Odor Limits,” The Senses & Society 3(3), 349-358 (co-author).
“HEXhibitionism,” in FASTWÜRMS: Donky@Ninja@Witch, Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery (co-author), 27-42.

2007 “Bodies of Interference,” in Carolee Schneemann: Split Decision, Toronto/Buffalo: Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art/CEPA Gallery, 26-31.
“Sometimes It’s Good to Put Up a Couple of Walls: Rirkrit Tiravanija,” Sketch, Spring, 8-11.

2006 The Smell Culture Reader, editor, Oxford & New York: Berg, 442 pp.
”Deborah Hay: A Performance Primer,” Performance Research, special issue “Indexes,” 11(2), 43-57.
”Fear, Shame, Ecstasy and Self-Transformation: Marina Abramovic,” in Technologies of Intuition, ed. Jennifer Fisher, Toronto & Winnipeg: YYZ Books & MAWA (co-author), 141-153.
“From Anechoic Cave to Sonic Chasm,” in Su-Mei Tse, Chicago & Luxembourg: The Renaissance Society & Editions Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, 89-112 (in English and French).

2005 “Jayce Salloum: Archive of the Street,” in Image, Index and Inscription: Essays on Contemporary Canadian Photography, ed. Robert Bean, Toronto: Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and YYZ Books (co-author), 167-179.

2004 Aural Cultures, editor of anthology and CD, Toronto & Banff: YYZ Books & Walter Phillips Gallery Editions, 288 pp.
“Platefuls of Air,” Public #30: Eating Things, Scott McFarlane, ed., 175-193.
“Volatile Effects: Olfactory Dimensions in Art and Architecture,” in Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. David Howes, Oxford & New York: Berg, 265-280.

2003 ”Trafficking in Air,” Performance Research, special issue “On Smell,” 8(3), Fall, 29-43.

2002 ”Toposmia: Art, Scent, and Interrogations of Spatiality,” Angelaki 7(1), Gary Banham, ed., April, 31-46.
”Volatile Architectures,” in Crime and Ornament: In the Shadow of Adolf Loos, Bernie Miller and Melony Ward, eds., Toronto: YYZ Books, 263-282.

2001 “Ambient Communities and Association Complexes: Aernout Mik’s Awry Socialities,” Parachute #101, Winter (co-author), 91-98.

2000 *”Inhaling Passions: Art, Sex and Scent,” Sexuality and Culture, 4(3), Summer, 37-56.

1999 ”Recipes for the Cube: The Aromatic and Edible in Art,” in Foodculture: Tasting Identities and Geographies in Art, Barbara Fischer, ed., Toronto: YYZ Books, 69-79.