One of the great challenges today is that we often experience untouched by the problems of others and by global issues like climatic change, fifty-fifty when we could hands exercise something to assist. We do not feel strongly plenty that we are part of a global community, part of a larger nosotros. Giving people access to information near often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, non empowered and poised for action. This is where art can make a difference. Art does not bear witness people what to do, yet engaging with a good work of fine art can connect you to your senses, torso, and listen. It tin make the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even activity.

As an creative person I have travelled to many countries around the world over the past 20 years. On one day I may stand up in front of an audition of global leaders or exchange thoughts with a foreign minister and discuss the construction of an artwork or exhibition with local craftsmen the adjacent. 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 office in these local and global exchanges has profoundly afflicted the artworks that I make, driving me to create fine art that I promise touches people everywhere.


Near of us know the feeling of beingness 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, we are moved; we are transported to a new place that is, notwithstanding, strongly rooted in a physical feel, in our bodies. We become enlightened of a feeling that may not exist unfamiliar to us just 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 thought 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 only likewise to feel it emotionally and physically. By doing this, art tin mitigate the numbing outcome created by the glut of information we are faced with today, and motivate people to plow thinking into doing.

Engaging with fine art is non simply a lone event. The arts and civilisation represent one of the few areas in our order where people can come up together to share an experience fifty-fifty if they see the globe in radically different ways. The important thing is non that we concur most the experience that nosotros share, but that nosotros consider information technology 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 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 endemic in public discourse today.

Fine art also encourages u.s.a. to cherish intuition, uncertainty, and inventiveness 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 island of Lesbos to draw attention to the plight of the millions of migrants trying to enter Europe right now and too to create a point of contact that takes the states beyond an usa-and-them mentality to a broader idea of what constitutes we. This is one manner that fine art can engage with the world to modify the world.

Little Dominicus, a solar energy project and social business that I set up 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 utilise light as their primary material. The immaterial qualities of light shape life. Lite is life. This is why we started Niggling Sunday.

On a applied level, nosotros piece of work to promote solar energy for all – Little Sun responds to the need to develop sustainable, renewable energy past producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing peculiarly on reaching regions of the world that practise not take consistent access to an electrical grid. At the same time, Little Sun is also almost making people feel connected to the lives of others in places that are far abroad geographically. For those who pick upwardly a Little Sunday solar lamp, hold it in their hands, and use it to light their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resource and of beingness powerful. With Little Dominicus you tap into the energy of the lord's day to power up with solar energy. It takes something that belongs to all of united states of america – the sun – and makes information technology bachelor to each of u.s.. This feeling of having personal power is something we tin can all place with. Little Sun creates a customs based effectually this feeling that spans the globe.

I am convinced that by bringing us together to share and discuss, a work of art can brand us more than tolerant of difference and of one another. The run into with art – and with others over fine art – can assistance us identify with 1 some other, expand our notions of nosotros, and show usa that individual engagement in the earth has actual consequences. That'south why I hope that in the future, fine art volition be invited to take office in discussions of social, political, and ecological issues even more than information technology is currently and that artists volition exist included when leaders at all levels, from the local to the global, consider solutions to the challenges that face up us in the world today.

Olafur Eliasson is 1 of the recipients of this year's Crystal Awards, presented at the Annual Meeting in Davos. You can follow him on Twitter via @olafureliasson