Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson is a wide-ranging artist-activist born in Copenhagen in 1967, whose work I had not yet encountered. On August 25, 2019, Lilli, Violet and I found In Real Life, a retrospective of his work in London’s Tate Modern, a stunning delight for all our senses. His geometric spheres are a glorious feast for the eyes; his windows, shifting kaleidoscopes. Violet and I walked through a long, shiny, crinkly, multi-faceted  tunnel and felt no alarm, only joy. We all walked through Your Blind Passenger, a 39-meter tube of moving mist that tantalized our sense of touch–unforgettable!. We joined other families in constructing with tinker toys, saw videos of Eliasson’s environmental projects in Iceland and Africa, and for lunch, tasted vegetarian cuisine developed in his Berlin Studio and served in one of the Tate’s many cafes. What an enveloping experience! I would love to go there again and again.

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One large wall was entirely covered with Reindeer Moss from Iceland that you could smell and touch. “Moss is like lichen,” said Eliasson. “It is not a plant. It lives on the humidity in the air so it is in fact alive when it sits there on the wall.” [My dear friend and faithful reader Marjo points out that Reindeer Moss IS a lichen: “Lichen is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.”]  It felt soft and springy to me.

Lilli and Violet were particularly intrigued by the overlapping shadows we all made in an exhibit room lit by multi-colored strobes. Those are Violet’s outstretched hands in this photo.Eliasson is seriously concerned about rapidly melting glaciers. Last year, he brought an iceberg from the North Atlantic off Iceland to the Tate Modern plaza, so people could actually see it melt. Violet and I explored his 2019 sculpture, The Presence of Absence, a bronze cast that makes visible the empty space left behind by a block of melting glacial ice.

Little Suns are hand-held, solar-powered lamps whose design was inspired by the Ethiopian mescal flower, a national symbol of positivity. In places off the electricity grid, Little Suns provide light and cut down on the use of dangerous and polluting fossil fuels, such as kerosene. Eliasson designed the lamps with the solar engineer Frederik Ottesen and launched the sale of them at the Tate Modern in 2012. More than 800,000 have been distributed throughout the world. Sales in the global north allow more affordable sales in the global south. In the video Eliasson shows how they work and what they can mean to families. I wish I had bought one.

Eliasson’s response to the arrival of over one million refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa in Europe in 2015 was to develop Green Light–an Artistic Workshop in collaboration with Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna. Participants were invited to build stackable geometric lights made from wood, recyclable plastic connectors and green LEDs. They attended seminars, screenings and lectures called Shared Learning. Under Austrian law, they could not be paid. They participated as volunteers and were offered meals and language lessons. Funds raised by the sale of the lights went to the Red Cross and Caritas, an organization offering migrants free legal advice. Refugees shared stories with each other, while residents could meet newcomers and build the lights together.

I really like this guy! His art and his initiatives make me think. Green Light was staged at the Venice Biennial in 2017 and replicated that year at the Moody Center for Art in Houston.

Green light is an act of welcoming, addressed both to those who have fled hardship and instability in their home countries and to the residents of the cities receiving them. I am very pleased to be able to present the project at the Biennale Arte 2017. To me, going to the biennale has always been about going deeper into reality, not about exiting reality. Mass displacement and migration are core challenges in the world today, affecting millions of people around the globe. Green light displays a modest strategy for addressing the challenges and responsibilities arising from the current situation and shines a light on the value of collaborative work and thinking.

– Olafur Eliasson

At the shop outside the Eliasson retrospective, I spied this book, which I will order for my grandchildren. It shows clearly how plastics are produced and recycled, the many uses of plastics throughout the last century, how our plastic use and pollution has spiraled out of control, and what we can do about it. What caught my eye was a graphic in the book that contrasted how beverages were packaged when I was a child (we returned soda bottles to the store) and now (oceans plagued with plastic bottles).

Update February 3, 2020: It was a joy recently to discover Olafur Eliasson’s 2016 work, Cosmic Gaze in the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach:“Cosmic Gaze” is a large work that covers one wall of a gallery. Here are close-ups.

Update, July 20, 2023: In the Buffalo Airport as we returned from Chautauqua, I discovered that Buffalo AKG Art Museum has recently installed Common Sky by Eliasson and his German partner, Sebastian Behman. Looking forward to seeing this someday.