One of the slap-up challenges today is that nosotros often feel untouched by the problems of others and by global issues like climate alter, even when nosotros could easily do something to aid. Nosotros exercise non experience strongly enough that we are part of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people access to data most often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, not empowered and poised for activeness. This is where fine art tin make a divergence. Fine art does not show people what to do, yet engaging with a expert work of art can connect you 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 accept travelled to many countries around the world over the past 20 years. On one twenty-four hours I may stand in front of an audience of global leaders or exchange thoughts with a foreign minister and discuss the construction of an artwork or exhibition with local craftsmen the next. Working equally an artist has brought me into contact with a wealth of outlooks on the earth and introduced me to a vast range of truly differing perceptions, felt ideas, and knowledge. Being able to take office 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.


Most of us know the feeling of being moved by a work of art, whether it is a vocal, a play, a poem, a novel, a painting, or a spatio-temporal experiment. When we are touched, we 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 us 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 thought that artists accept responsibilities may come as a surprise to some – is to aid people not only go to know and understand something with their minds but as well to feel it emotionally and physically. By doing this, art tin mitigate the numbing consequence 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 merely a lone consequence. The arts and culture represent one of the few areas in our social club where people can come together to share an experience fifty-fifty if they come across the earth in radically different ways. The important affair is not that we agree most the feel that nosotros share, but that nosotros 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 customs created by arts and civilisation is potentially a peachy 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 united states of america to cherish intuition, uncertainty, and inventiveness and to search constantly for new ideas; artists aim to intermission rules and find unorthodox means of budgeted contemporary problems. My friend Ai Weiwei, for case, the great Chinese creative person, is currently making a temporary studio on the island of Lesbos to depict attention to the plight of the millions of migrants trying to enter Europe right at present and also to create a point of contact that takes us beyond an usa-and-them mentality to a broader thought of what constitutes we. This is one way that art can engage with the world to change the world.

Petty Sun, a solar energy projection and social business that I fix in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is another case of what I believe art tin do. Calorie-free is and so incredibly of import to me, and many of my works employ lite as their primary material. The immaterial qualities of lite shape life. Light is life. This is why we started Little Sunday.

On a practical level, we work to promote solar energy for all – Footling Sun responds to the need to develop sustainable, renewable energy by producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing peculiarly on reaching regions of the world that practise not have consistent access to an electrical filigree. At the same fourth dimension, Little Sunday is as well about making people feel continued to the lives of others in places that are far away geographically. For those who pick upward a Lilliputian Sun solar lamp, hold information technology in their easily, and use it to light their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resources and of beingness powerful. With Little Sun you tap into the energy of the lord's day to power up with solar free energy. It takes something that belongs to all of the states – the sunday – and makes it available to each of us. This feeling of having personal ability is something we can all identify with. Piddling Sun creates a community based effectually this feeling that spans the globe.

I am convinced that by bringing usa together to share and discuss, a work of fine art tin make us more tolerant of divergence and of 1 another. The encounter with fine art – and with others over fine art – can help us place with 1 some other, aggrandize our notions of we, and show us that individual engagement in the earth has actual consequences. That'south why I promise that in the futurity, fine art will be invited to take part in discussions of social, political, and ecological bug fifty-fifty more than than information technology 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 up us in the globe today.

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