Organised by AIDS Concern, supported by Gilead with Wyndham Social as Community Partner, Emanate reimagines community design through the architecture of scent, crafting a multisensory experience that centers the unique perspectives, emotional depths, and stories of people living with HIV (PLHIV), doctors, counsellors and carers. Inspired by perfumery’s layered structure—top, heart, and base notes—the exhibition designs encounters that diffuse personal narratives into collective spaces, fostering intimacy, care, and memory in the context of HIV.

Co-created with AIDS Concern, bespoke room fragrances and diffusion stone installations, crafted by PLHIV alongside doctors, counsellors and carers with their live experiences, greet visitors with vibrant top notes, inviting connection without dogma and foregrounding their lived experiences. Trevor Yeung’s alabaster and hotel soap installation, Lovers That You Met but Who Have Been Forgotten (2025), transforms long-kept disposable hygiene objects into poetic indices of intimacy, complementing the emotional resonance of PLHIV’s stories. Dr. Lut Ming’s prose poem, authored as a doctor-poet, designs a cadence of care through text, reflecting the nuanced interplay of healing and empathy. Sharu Binnong Sikdar’s participatory sculpture, Pebble Ripples, uses red-gradated strings and inscribed pebbles to materialize communal solidarity, bridging gallery and public space while amplifying the voices of PLHIV, healthcare professionals, and allies. Guided scent walks, workshops, and talks extend this design into everyday life, proposing that care, like fragrance, circulates softly yet persistently, eliminating stigma and fostering shared breath.

Emanate is a community design intervention where sensory and social layers intertwine, creating hospitable spaces for the stories to resonate, transform, and bring people together.