I of the cracking challenges today is that we oft feel untouched by the problems of others and by global bug like climate change, even when we could easily do something to help. Nosotros practice not experience strongly enough that we are part of a global community, role of a larger we. Giving people access 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 not show people what to exercise, yet engaging with a good work of art tin connect y'all to your senses, trunk, and mind. It tin can make the globe 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 twenty years. On one day I may stand in forepart of an audience of global leaders or exchange thoughts with a strange minister and hash out the construction of an artwork or exhibition with local craftsmen the next. Working as an creative person 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. Beingness able to have 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.


Near of us know the feeling of being moved by a piece of work of art, whether it is a song, a play, a verse form, 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 feel, in our bodies. We become aware of a feeling that may not be unfamiliar to us merely which we did not actively focus on before. This transformative feel 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 up as a surprise to some – is to help people not merely get to know and understand something with their minds only also to feel it emotionally and physically. By doing this, art can mitigate the numbing upshot created by the glut of information nosotros are faced with today, and motivate people to turn thinking into doing.

Engaging with fine art is not simply a lone issue. The arts and civilization correspond 1 of the few areas in our society where people tin can come up together to share an experience even if they see the world in radically different ways. The important matter is non that we agree about the experience that we share, merely that we consider information technology 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 community created by arts and civilisation 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 discourse today.

Art as well encourages the states to cherish intuition, uncertainty, and creativity and to search constantly for new ideas; artists aim to break rules and find unorthodox ways of approaching gimmicky issues. My friend Ai Weiwei, for case, the great 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 correct now and as well to create a point of contact that takes us beyond an u.s.-and-them mentality to a broader idea of what constitutes we. This is one way that art can engage with the world to change the world.

Footling Lord's day, a solar energy project and social business that I ready in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is another example of what I believe art tin can practise. Light is so incredibly important to me, and many of my works use light as their primary material. The immaterial qualities of light shape life. Lite is life. This is why nosotros started Trivial Dominicus.

On a practical level, we work to promote solar energy for all – Little 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 practice not have consistent admission to an electrical grid. At the same time, Fiddling Sun is likewise about making people feel connected to the lives of others in places that are far away geographically. For those who pick up a Little Sun solar lamp, hold it in their easily, and use information technology to light their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resources and of beingness powerful. With Little Dominicus you tap into the free energy of the sun to power up with solar energy. Information technology takes something that belongs to all of us – the sun – and makes it available to each of usa. This feeling of having personal power is something nosotros can all identify with. Picayune Sunday creates a community based around this feeling that spans the world.

I am convinced that by bringing u.s. together to share and discuss, a piece of work of art tin can make us more than tolerant of difference and of one some other. The encounter with art – and with others over art – tin help usa identify with one another, aggrandize our notions of we, and evidence us that individual engagement in the earth has bodily consequences. That'due south why I hope that in the future, art will be invited to have part in discussions of social, political, and ecological bug fifty-fifty more than 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's Crystal Awards, presented at the Annual Meeting in Davos. You can follow him on Twitter via @olafureliasson