One of the groovy challenges today is that we often feel untouched by the problems of others and past global issues like climate change, even when nosotros could easily do something to help. We practise not feel strongly enough that we are role of a global community, function of a larger nosotros. Giving people access to information about often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, not empowered and poised for action. This is where art can make a divergence. Fine art does not show people what to do, yet engaging with a good work of art can connect y'all to your senses, torso, and mind. It tin can brand the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even action.

Every bit an artist I have travelled to many countries around the globe over the past 20 years. On one day I may stand in forepart of an audience of global leaders or substitution thoughts with a foreign minister and discuss 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 earth and introduced me to a vast range of truly differing perceptions, felt ideas, and knowledge. Beingness able to have role 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.


Virtually of usa know the feeling of being moved past a work of fine 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, nonetheless, strongly rooted in a physical feel, in our bodies. We become aware of a feeling that may non be unfamiliar to u.s.a. only which we did not actively focus on before. This transformative experience is what art is constantly seeking.

I believe that one of the major responsibilities of artists – and the idea that artists take responsibilities may come as a surprise to some – is to aid people not just go to know and understand something with their minds but also to feel information technology emotionally and physically. By doing this, art tin can mitigate the numbing outcome created by the overabundance of data we are faced with today, and motivate people to plow thinking into doing.

Engaging with fine art is not only a lonely event. The arts and civilisation correspond ane of the few areas in our society where people tin come up together to share an feel even if they see the earth in radically different means. The important affair is non that we agree about the experience that we share, but that we consider it worthwhile sharing an experience at all. In fine 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 culture 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 owned in public soapbox today.

Art also encourages us to cherish intuition, incertitude, and creativity and to search constantly for new ideas; artists aim to break rules and notice unorthodox ways of approaching gimmicky issues. My friend Ai Weiwei, for instance, the neat Chinese artist, is currently making a temporary studio on the isle of Lesbos to describe attending to the plight of the millions of migrants trying to enter Europe right 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 ane style that art can engage with the earth to change the world.

Little Sun, a solar energy project and social business that I prepare in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is some other example of what I believe art tin can do. Light is so incredibly important to me, and many of my works use light as their primary cloth. The immaterial qualities of calorie-free shape life. Light is life. This is why we started Petty Sun.

On a practical level, we work to promote solar energy for all – Little Sun responds to the demand to develop sustainable, renewable energy by producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing peculiarly on reaching regions of the globe that do non have consequent access to an electric grid. At the same time, Footling Sun is also about making people feel connected to the lives of others in places that are far away geographically. For those who pick upwardly a Little Sunday solar lamp, concur information technology in their hands, and use it to low-cal their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resources and of beingness 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 us – the sun – and makes it bachelor to each of us. This feeling of having personal power is something we can all identify with. Piddling Sunday creates a community based around this feeling that spans the world.

I am convinced that by bringing us together to share and talk over, a work of fine art can brand the states more tolerant of difference and of i another. The see with art – and with others over art – can assistance us identify with one another, expand our notions of we, and prove us that individual appointment in the globe has bodily consequences. That'southward why I hope that in the future, art will exist invited to take role 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 one of the recipients of this year's Crystal Awards, presented at the Annual Meeting in Davos. You can follow him on Twitter via @olafureliasson