Sissel Tolaas is a Norwegian artist and researcher known for her work with smells.
Sissel Tolaas was born in 1963 in Stavanger, Norway and is based in Berlin. Tolaas has a background in chemistry; mathematics, linguistics; languages and art; she studied at the universities of Oslo, Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Oxford.
Tolaas is working actively on diverse aspects of the topic of scents. She began to concentrate on this in 1990, researching its importance in different sciences, fields of art /design and other disciplines. At that time she developed a "smell archive" in over 7000 airtight jars. In January 2004 Tolaas established the Smell Research Lab Berlin, for smell and communication / language, supported by IFF International Flavours and Fragrances.