About Saskia
Saskia Wilson-Brown was born to a Cuban dad and an English mom in San Francisco. She was raised in the French educational system, and after receiving her Baccalauréat Littéraire in 1996, she went on to receive a BA in Fine Art at U.C. Berkeley, and a Masters in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College, in London.
After several years as an artist (and bartender) in London, Saskia moved to Los Angeles and found herself working in commercial and music video art departments, with a team assembled by production designer and artist Marcos Lutyens. In this capacity, she worked on set with clients that included Madonna, Travis, Ronan Keating, Marilyn Manson, Master P, and companies like Geico Insurance, PepsiCo., Ford Thunderbird, L'Oreal, and many others.
In 2003, she joined the board and eventually served as festival co-director for Los Angeles’ Silver Lake Film Festival, launching the festival’s visionary new media arm MP4Fest in 2005, in addition to curating many of its film, art and music events.
In 2007 Saskia was hired to head the newly formed filmmaker outreach department at Al Gore’s Current TV. There, she and her team conceived of and spearheaded projects designed to gain new short format documentary content for the network from international filmmakers, while initiating content partnerships with organizations like Tribeca Film Festival, AFI Festival, and Art Basel. At Current, she also participated in the production of Emmy-nominated shows like TV Free Burning Man, for which she was responsible for finding content producers to create short format documentary videos for on-air distribution.
After leaving Current in 2010, she went on to work as an independent producer and film distribution strategist, while producing events around new models in the arts. These included the Open Video Alliance Filmmaker Summit at Slamdance Film Festival, Lance Weiler’s DIY Days events, and the TEDActive Innovation Lab with (and for) her friend Sarah Shewey. She also initiated, curated and produced programs such as the art/film extravaganza Ultra Fabulous Beyond Drag with frequent collaborator Austin Young in 2007 and 2009, as well as a screening of historic short Cuban movies called Cuban Revolutionary Film with her father Adolfo Nodal, for Casa Del Tunel in Tijuana in 2010.
In 2009 she conceived of and started a guerilla screening series called Cinema Speakeasy, which she oversaw with her colleague Georgi Goldman in Los Angeles, in frequent collaboration with the Echo Park Film Center. One of the first of a new crop of guerilla film screenings series designed to support independent film distribution, in 2010, the series expanded to San Francisco, overseen by Kate Sullivan, Allison Davis and Fhay Arceo. In 2011 Cinema Speakeasy had a year-long residency with Ace Hotel, Palm Springs. Further projects and pursuits included programming feature documentaries and serving as a shorts juror for Slamdance Film Festival; serving as film juror, advisor and panelist for organizations ranging from Gen Art to IFP; and consulting for media projects that included The Yes Men, Stephen Gyllenhall's Grassroots, Jamie King's Dark Fibre in India, and Irish movie One Hundred Mornings, directed by Conor Horgan. She published frequently in WorkBook Project, and Filmmaker Magazine, and spoke at a number of conferences and festivals including Sundance Film Festival, DIY Days, Open Video Conference, Power to the Pixel, and many more. She also served as an industry mentor at SxSW.
Her experience in media coalesced in a deep commitment to independent practices, open information, and international collaboration in the arts.
In 2012, her commitment to supporting the arts and her interest in unorthodox creative practices led her to form The Institute for Art and Olfaction (IAO), a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization devoted to experimentation, access and cross-media projects that make use of scent.
As founder and director of the IAO, she led the organization from an idea to an international presence, forging long-term relationships with institutions such as Jet Propulsion Laboratory /JPL (Pasadena), Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (St. Louis), the Getty Museum and Getty Villa (Los Angeles), SxSW (Austin), Goethe Institut, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Huntington Library (Los Angeles), Wallace Collection (London), Watts Gallery (Guildford), the National Media Museum UK (Bradford), Mediamatic (Amsterdam), Marres (Maastricht), Aspen Art Museum (Aspen), Danish Film Institute (Copenhagen) and many many others.
In 2013 she created and launched The Art and Olfaction Awards, an international awards mechanism for independent, artisan and experimental perfumers. Since 2013, the awards have presented a yearly event in cities around the world, including in Lisbon, Los Angeles, London, Amsterdam and Berlin, and have become an arbiter of excellence for independent perfumery and experimental work with scent. Saskia's oversight has helped the awards evolve from a small event of 80 people to an international extravaganza with submissions from every continent (except Antarctica). The awards are judged anonymously, each submission tracked by a number alone.
In her capacity of director of the IAO, she has launched many programs designed to facilitate access and experimentation in the field of perfumery, including the Experimental Scent Summit with Klara Ravat, a TED-talks-style event that showcases new experimental work with scent, Scent Fair LA with Darin Klein that shows independent and artisan perfumers in the context of museums such as Hammer Museum and Craft Contemporary, and Open Source Scent Culture, an ongoing project devoted to information sharing in the perfume industry. In 2019 and 2020 she served as a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London, before Covid called her home to LA, where she and her team successfully transitioned the IAO to an online format. In 2020, she re-launched the arts exhibition program with IAO Gallery, a space devoted to olfactory art. In 2021 she and the IAO team initiated the IAO Perfume Library, following a donation of just shy of 1,000 perfumes and books from Conor McTeague. In 2023, she launched Scent Week, a biennial festival exploring the myriad cultures and practices with scent in Los Angeles and beyond, which is slated to return in 2025.
Saskia's current projects include producing and hosting a radio show and podcast called Perfume on the Radio, while continuing to serve as Executive Director at the Institute for Art and Olfaction.
Since 2021, she is pursuing a PhD about the dynamics of power in the contemporary perfume industry at University College Dublin's SmartLab. She is also working on a book, tp be published in Spring 2026.