One of the peachy challenges today is that we frequently experience untouched by the problems of others and past global bug like climatic change, even when we could hands practice something to help. Nosotros exercise not feel strongly enough that we are function of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people admission to data most oftentimes leaves them feeling overwhelmed and asunder, not empowered and poised for action. This is where fine art can make a difference. Art does not evidence people what to do, yet engaging with a adept work of art tin connect you to your senses, body, and listen. It tin can brand the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, date, and fifty-fifty action.

Every bit an artist I have travelled to many countries around the world over the by xx years. On one 24-hour interval I may stand in forepart of an audience of global leaders or exchange thoughts with a strange minister and discuss 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 knowledge. Being able to take office in these local and global exchanges has greatly affected the artworks that I make, driving me to create art that I hope touches people everywhere.


About of us know the feeling of being moved by a work of art, whether it is a song, a play, a poem, a novel, a painting, or a spatio-temporal experiment. When we are touched, nosotros are moved; we are transported to a new place that is, nevertheless, strongly rooted in a physical experience, in our bodies. We become aware of a feeling that may non be unfamiliar to us 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 have responsibilities may come up as a surprise to some – is to assistance people not just go to know and understand something with their minds but also to feel it emotionally and physically. By doing this, fine art tin mitigate the numbing outcome created past the glut of information we are faced with today, and motivate people to turn thinking into doing.

Engaging with art is not simply a solitary consequence. The arts and civilization represent one of the few areas in our society where people can come up together to share an experience fifty-fifty if they run into the world in radically different means. The important thing is not that nosotros agree about the experience that we share, but that we consider it worthwhile sharing an feel at all. In art and other forms of cultural expression, disagreement is accepted and embraced equally an essential ingredient. In this sense, the customs 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 and so owned in public soapbox today.

Art also encourages us to cherish intuition, uncertainty, and creativity and to search constantly for new ideas; artists aim to break rules and find unorthodox ways of approaching contemporary problems. My friend Ai Weiwei, for example, the great Chinese artist, is currently making a temporary studio on the isle of Lesbos to depict attention to the plight of the millions of migrants trying to enter Europe right now and as well to create a point of contact that takes us beyond an us-and-them mentality to a broader thought of what constitutes we. This is one fashion that art can appoint with the world to change the world.

Picayune Sun, a solar energy project and social business concern that I fix upwardly in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is another case of what I believe art tin can do. Light is then incredibly important to me, and many of my works use low-cal equally their primary cloth. The immaterial qualities of light shape life. Light is life. This is why we started Fiddling Sun.

On a applied level, we work to promote solar free energy for all – Little Sun responds to the need to develop sustainable, renewable free energy by producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing particularly on reaching regions of the world that do not have consistent access to an electrical grid. At the same time, Niggling Sun is also about making people feel continued to the lives of others in places that are far away geographically. For those who pick up a Fiddling Sun solar lamp, concur it in their hands, and use information technology to light their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resource and of existence powerful. With Little Sunday you lot tap into the energy of the sun to power upwardly with solar energy. It takes something that belongs to all of the states – the dominicus – and makes it available to each of u.s.. This feeling of having personal power is something nosotros tin all identify with. Petty Sun creates a community based effectually this feeling that spans the world.

I am convinced that past bringing us together to share and hash out, a work of fine art tin make us more than tolerant of difference and of one another. The run into with fine art – and with others over fine art – can assistance us identify with ane another, aggrandize our notions of we, and bear witness usa that individual engagement in the world has actual consequences. That'due south why I hope that in the future, art volition be invited to accept 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 us in the world today.

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