Sweet Smell of Success by Dario Mohr, commissioned by ArtBridge for the Annual 2025 Artbridge Gala.

These one-of-a-kind trophies were inspired by Adinkra symbols referencing his Akan ancestry as well as the history and origin of the trophy.

Congrats to the Honorees:

1. Victor “Marka27” Quinonez (@marka_27)
2. Willy Pilku at Core Scaffolding (@corescaffold)
3. Riseboro Community Partnership (@riseboronyc)
4. Slate Property Group (@slatepropertygroup)

“Sweet Smell of Success” draws on the trophy as both symbol and seduction. These sculptural vessels evoke triumph through elegance, polish, and allure, which are qualities often associated with luxury and achievement. Yet beneath this sweetness lingers a more uncomfortable truth. Historically, trophies marked victory through conquest, extraction, and the transformation of people, land, and culture into symbols of prestige.

Scent operates here as metaphor. Fragrance has the power to attract, to mask, and to linger long after its source is gone. In the same way, colonial success is often perfumed—its violence softened by narratives of meritocracy, progress, and national pride. What smells “sweet” in the present is inseparable from what was taken in the past.

By merging the language of luxury with the form of the trophy, this series exposes the irony of celebration itself. These objects ask viewers to consider how power is made desirable, how history is deodorized, and how symbols of success continue to circulate without acknowledging their origins. Sweet Smell of Success ultimately invites a reckoning: to question what we have been taught to admire, and to imagine systems of value rooted not in conquest, but in memory, accountability, and ancestral truth.