One of the great challenges today is that we ofttimes feel untouched past the problems of others and past global issues like climate change, fifty-fifty when we could easily do something to help. We exercise not feel strongly enough that we are function of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people admission to data most often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and asunder, not empowered and poised for action. This is where art can make a divergence. Art does non prove people what to do, yet engaging with a proficient work of art can connect y'all to your senses, body, and mind. It tin can make the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even action.

As an artist I have travelled to many countries around the world over the past 20 years. On one day I may stand in front of an audience of global leaders or commutation thoughts with a strange minister and hash out the construction of an artwork or exhibition with local craftsmen the next. Working every bit 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 cognition. Being able to take part in these local and global exchanges has profoundly affected the artworks that I brand, driving me to create art that I hope touches people everywhere.


Most of us know the feeling of being moved by a piece of work of art, whether information technology is a song, a play, a verse form, a novel, a painting, or a spatio-temporal experiment. When nosotros are touched, we are moved; we are transported to a new place that is, notwithstanding, strongly rooted in a concrete feel, in our bodies. We become aware of a feeling that may not be unfamiliar to the states but which we did not actively focus on before. This transformative experience is what art is constantly seeking.

I believe that ane of the major responsibilities of artists – and the idea that artists have responsibilities may come every bit a surprise to some – is to assistance people not only get to know and understand something with their minds merely also to feel it emotionally and physically. By doing this, art can mitigate the numbing result created by the glut of information we are faced with today, and motivate people to turn thinking into doing.

Engaging with art is not simply a alone outcome. The arts and culture represent 1 of the few areas in our society where people can come up together to share an experience even if they see the world in radically unlike ways. The important thing is not that we agree about the experience that nosotros share, only that we consider it worthwhile sharing an experience at all. In art and other forms of cultural expression, disagreement is accustomed and embraced as an essential ingredient. In this sense, the customs created by arts and culture is potentially a cracking 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 owned in public discourse today.

Art also encourages us to cherish intuition, dubiety, and creativity and to search constantly for new ideas; artists aim to suspension rules and observe unorthodox means of approaching contemporary problems. My friend Ai Weiwei, for example, the great Chinese creative person, is currently making a temporary studio on the isle of Lesbos to draw attention to the plight of the millions of migrants trying to enter Europe right now and also to create a point of contact that takes u.s.a. across an us-and-them mentality to a broader idea of what constitutes we. This is one way that art can appoint with the globe to modify the world.

Piddling Sun, a solar energy project and social business that I prepare in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is another example of what I believe art can practise. Low-cal is and so incredibly of import to me, and many of my works use calorie-free as their master material. The immaterial qualities of light shape life. Light is life. This is why nosotros started Picayune Sun.

On a applied level, we work to promote solar energy for all – Niggling Sun responds to the need to develop sustainable, renewable energy by producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing especially on reaching regions of the earth that do not accept consistent access to an electrical grid. At the same time, Little Sun is also about making people experience connected to the lives of others in places that are far away geographically. For those who pick upwardly a Picayune Sunday solar lamp, concur it in their hands, and use it to low-cal their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resources and of being powerful. With Little Sun you tap into the energy of the sun to power up with solar energy. It takes something that belongs to all of the states – the sun – and makes it available to each of us. This feeling of having personal power is something we tin can all identify with. Little Sun creates a community based effectually this feeling that spans the globe.

I am convinced that by bringing us together to share and discuss, a work of fine art can make us more tolerant of departure and of one another. The encounter with art – and with others over art – tin help u.s.a. place with i some other, expand our notions of we, and evidence us that individual engagement in the world has actual consequences. That's why I hope that in the future, art volition be invited to have function in discussions of social, political, and ecological issues even more than it is currently and that artists will be included when leaders at all levels, from the local to the global, consider solutions to the challenges that face us in the world today.

Olafur Eliasson is i of the recipients of this year'due south Crystal Awards, presented at the Almanac Coming together in Davos. Yous can follow him on Twitter via @olafureliasson