One of the corking challenges today is that we often experience untouched by the bug of others and by global bug like climate change, even when nosotros could easily do something to assist. We do not feel strongly enough that we are part of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people admission to information most often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and asunder, not empowered and poised for action. This is where fine art can make a divergence. Art does non testify people what to do, yet engaging with a good work of art tin can connect you to your senses, torso, and mind. It can make the globe felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and fifty-fifty action.

As an artist I accept travelled to many countries around the earth over the past 20 years. On one mean solar day I may stand in forepart of an audience of global leaders or exchange thoughts with a foreign minister and talk over the construction of an artwork or exhibition with local craftsmen the next. Working as an artist has brought me into contact with a wealth of outlooks on the world and introduced me to a vast range of truly differing perceptions, felt ideas, and knowledge. Beingness able to take part in these local and global exchanges has profoundly affected the artworks that I make, driving me to create art that I hope touches people everywhere.


Well-nigh of united states of america know the feeling of existence moved past a piece of work of art, whether information technology is a vocal, a play, a verse form, a novel, a painting, or a spatio-temporal experiment. When we are touched, nosotros are moved; nosotros are transported to a new place that is, nevertheless, strongly rooted in a physical feel, in our bodies. We become aware of a feeling that may not be unfamiliar to u.s. merely which we did not actively focus on before. This transformative experience is what fine art is constantly seeking.

I believe that one of the major responsibilities of artists – and the idea that artists have responsibilities may come up every bit a surprise to some – is to help people not just get to know and sympathize something with their minds but also to feel information technology emotionally and physically. By doing this, art tin can mitigate the numbing result created by the overabundance of information we are faced with today, and motivate people to turn thinking into doing.

Engaging with fine art is not simply a lonely event. The arts and culture represent one of the few areas in our gild where people can come together to share an experience even if they see the world in radically unlike ways. The important thing is not that nosotros agree about the experience that we share, only that we consider it worthwhile sharing an experience at all. In art and other forms of cultural expression, disagreement is accepted and embraced as an essential ingredient. In this sense, the community created by arts and civilization is potentially a great source of inspiration for politicians and activists who work to transcend the polarising populism and stigmatisation of other people, positions, and worldviews that is sadly so endemic in public discourse today.

Art likewise encourages u.s. to cherish intuition, dubiety, and creativity and to search constantly for new ideas; artists aim to break rules and find unorthodox ways of approaching contemporary issues. My friend Ai Weiwei, for example, the great Chinese artist, is currently making a temporary studio on the isle of Lesbos to draw attending to the plight of the millions of migrants trying to enter Europe correct now and also to create a point of contact that takes us beyond an us-and-them mentality to a broader idea of what constitutes we. This is 1 mode that fine art tin can engage with the world to change the globe.

Trivial Dominicus, a solar free energy project and social business that I set up in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is another example of what I believe art can practice. Calorie-free is then incredibly important to me, and many of my works use calorie-free as their primary material. The immaterial qualities of light shape life. Low-cal is life. This is why we started Picayune Sun.

On a practical level, we piece of work to promote solar energy for all – Fiddling Sun responds to the need to develop sustainable, renewable energy past producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing especially on reaching regions of the world that exercise not have consistent access to an electrical grid. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, Little Sun is likewise about making people feel continued to the lives of others in places that are far away geographically. For those who pick upwards a Little Sun solar lamp, concur it in their easily, and utilise it to low-cal their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resources and of being powerful. With Little Sunday you tap into the energy of the sunday to power up with solar energy. It takes something that belongs to all of us – the lord's day – and makes information technology bachelor to each of usa. This feeling of having personal power is something we tin all identify with. Trivial Lord's day creates a customs based around this feeling that spans the globe.

I am convinced that by bringing us together to share and talk over, a work of art tin can make us more tolerant of difference and of one another. The run into with fine art – and with others over art – can help us identify with one another, expand our notions of we, and show u.s.a. that individual engagement in the world has actual consequences. That's why I hope that in the future, fine art will be invited to take part in discussions of social, political, and ecological issues even more than it is currently and that artists will exist included when leaders at all levels, from the local to the global, consider solutions to the challenges that face usa in the globe today.

Olafur Eliasson is one of the recipients of this year'southward Crystal Awards, presented at the Annual Coming together in Davos. Yous tin follow him on Twitter via @olafureliasson