One of the great challenges today is that we often experience untouched past the issues of others and by global issues like climate change, even when we could hands do something to help. We exercise non feel strongly enough that we are function of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people access to data most oftentimes leaves them feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, not empowered and poised for action. This is where art can make a difference. Fine art does non show people what to do, nevertheless engaging with a skillful work of art can connect you to your senses, body, and heed. It can make the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, appointment, and even activeness.

Equally an creative person I accept travelled to many countries around the world over the past 20 years. On one 24-hour interval I may stand in front of an audience of global leaders or exchange thoughts with a foreign minister and discuss the structure 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 world and introduced me to a vast range of truly differing perceptions, felt ideas, and knowledge. Being able to have part 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; we are transported to a new identify that is, withal, strongly rooted in a concrete experience, in our bodies. Nosotros become enlightened of a feeling that may non 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 1 of the major responsibilities of artists – and the idea that artists have responsibilities may come as a surprise to some – is to assistance people non only go to know and understand something with their minds just too to feel information technology emotionally and physically. Past doing this, art can mitigate the numbing outcome created past the overabundance of data we are faced with today, and motivate people to turn thinking into doing.

Engaging with art is non just a solitary consequence. The arts and culture represent one of the few areas in our order where people can come together to share an experience even if they come across the world in radically different ways. The of import affair is non that we agree about the feel that we share, only that we consider it worthwhile sharing an experience at all. In fine art and other forms of cultural expression, disagreement is accepted and embraced equally an essential ingredient. In this sense, the community created by arts and civilisation is potentially a swell 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 soapbox today.

Fine 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 gimmicky issues. My friend Ai Weiwei, for case, the great Chinese artist, is currently making a temporary studio on the isle 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 us beyond an us-and-them mentality to a broader idea of what constitutes we. This is one way that fine art can engage with the world to alter the world.

Little Lord's day, a solar energy project and social business organization that I gear up in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen, is another example of what I believe art can do. Light is so incredibly important to me, and many of my works employ light every bit their primary cloth. The immaterial qualities of light shape life. Light is life. This is why we started Little Sun.

On a practical level, we work to promote solar free energy for all – Little Sun responds to the demand to develop sustainable, renewable energy past producing and distributing affordable solar-powered lamps and mobile chargers, focusing especially on reaching regions of the world that do not accept consistent admission to an electrical filigree. At the same time, Little Sun is also about making people experience connected to the lives of others in places that are far abroad geographically. For those who selection upwards a Little Sun solar lamp, hold it in their hands, and use it to light their evening, the lamp communicates a feeling of having resource and of being powerful. With Little Lord's day you lot tap into the free energy of the sun to power up with solar energy. It takes something that belongs to all of us – the sun – and makes information technology bachelor to each of us. This feeling of having personal power is something we can all identify with. Fiddling Sun creates a community based around this feeling that spans the world.

I am convinced that by bringing us together to share and discuss, a work of art can make usa more tolerant of divergence and of ane some other. The encounter with art – and with others over fine art – can help us identify with ane another, expand our notions of nosotros, and evidence united states that individual engagement in the world has actual consequences. That's why I promise that in the hereafter, art volition be invited to take 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 ane of the recipients of this yr's Crystal Awards, presented at the Annual Coming together in Davos. Yous can follow him on Twitter via @olafureliasson