“Iceberg artist” Olafur Eliasson on his first solo show in Asia-Pacific and how art tackles climate change

On one visit to Taiwan, the Berlin-based artist learnt about a law that protects the interests and views of Indigenous communities during commercial activities such as mining. He’s a fierce critic of what he calls the Eurocentric idea of development—one that blinds people to the value of forming a sustainable relationship with nature. “We have been borrowing so much from the future that we are giving our children a hard time. What is happening now is that these western, self-entitled, upright-walking, up-to-no-good human beings gradually realise that we are ruining the planet,” he says. “Suddenly, we have to reconsider what we do. Suddenly, the Indigenous people, whom we’ve been bashing for hundreds of years and [calling] ‘underdeveloped’, are not underdeveloped at all. They are sophisticated. They are living in harmony with nature. This is so interesting, because suddenly we are the western minority.”

Olafur intends the exhibition to be a space to open up discussions on the broader themes of climate change. For The Last Seven Days of Glacial Ice, for instance, he made 3D scans of fragments of ice that had broken off the Breithamerkurjökull glacier and up on Diamond Beach, on the southern coast of Iceland. He used these scans to cast sculptures of the fragments in bronze—a material that he associates with permanence and commemoration—and lined them up on a table from largest to smallest. Next to each sculpture is a glass orb representing the volume of ice lost and thus placed in reverse order according to size—from smallest to largest. The piece is meant to be Olafur’s symbolic “immortalisation” of the melting ice before it disappears.

“The climate crisis is not everybody’s favourite topic,” he says, pointing to the difficulty of prioritising conservation efforts which, for the most part, aren’t profitable. “And this is where I think the art and cultural spaces and the freedom of speech suddenly matter.” He believes art gives people the chance to confront truths hidden by political agendas and is a safe space to explore, be critical and be vulnerable. “Here, you can ask, ‘What do we do, then? What do I do for my children’s sake?’”

Olafur realised the power of art at a young age. His father was an artist, who introduced him to that world. Growing up in Scandinavia and moving to Germany in his late 20s, both places where, he says, culture is a huge part of society, he learnt to view museums, literature and concerts as ways to “see the world in higher granularity. Culture holds the potential to see things differently and evaluate things critically.”

Scandiavia’s natural environment further fuels ideas for his artistic creations. In Moss Wall (1994), which is part of the current exhibition, he wove reindeer moss, a lichen native to countries in the northern latitudes, into a wire mesh; he mounts it on a gallery wall and it is watered from time to time. The varying hydration conditions change the colour, texture and smell of the space. Through this work, Olafur disrupts the conventional exhibition space by bringing a living, organic element into a typically sterile environment, inviting visitors to appreciate the “art” of nature.

“I like my materials to be [familiar], like water or objects in a kitchen drawer,” he says. “I don’t hide the materials. I enjoy it when people look at my work and say, ‘Oh, I can make this at home.’” He also makes a point of choosing ethical, environmentally sound materials. “I look at the consequences of my choices,” he says. “Do I use copper from a mine [that might have unsafe] working conditions? Or recycled materials? Creativity lies in how you turn your values into reality.”

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He still has moments of doubt: even after carefully calculating the carbon footprint of creating Ice Watch, offsetting it financially and choosing shipping containers normally used to ship frozen fish rather than having something tailor-made, he was concerned that such mitigation still wasn’t enough.

But he stands firm in his belief that art can sometimes make a greater impact than official bodies like governments, so he’ll keep on making it. In the case of Ice Watch, 250,000 turned up to see the installation, and the international press coverage generated “an enormous impact. So I decided that it was worth it,” he says. “This ice piece was a relevant statement within the context of a relevant time. I don’t think one should keep doing it, nor should anyone send the ice to Saudi Arabia, where it would have [melted] in four hours, and the transport would have [created a far larger carbon footprint].”

Olafur admits making art only goes a tiny way towards changing the world. “But to use your creativity is to act out of the conviction that you are a part of something.” He believes it is critical to lay bare the damage being done to the planet so that the world wakes up and creates space for conversations about change. “Art makes explicit points in a discussion that would otherwise be hard to raise.”

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