Celebrating Earth Day today, the artist wants people around the world to rethink the way that we see our planet in a time of crisis
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Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, who is best known for his conceptual and often immersive artworks, has launched what is perhaps his largest project to date. Part of Back to Earth, a new multi-year project by London’s Serpentine Galleries, which invites artists from varying disciplines to respond to the climate emergency, the “participatory artwork” urges everyone to take part.
Taking to Instagram this morning, the Eliasson said the work – which is titled Earth Perspectives – “will make you into the artist”. Invited to download nine images of the planet Earth, each in fluoro orange and pink, people are encouraged to stare at the dot in the middle of the image for ten seconds, before looking at a blank surface. The after image will appear in new colours, differing from person to person – as Eliasson promises, a new perspective on the world in which we live.
“Today, ‘the world as we know it’ is a phrase of the past,” he said in an earlier statement. “The current health crisis has brought our societies close to a halt, affecting our economies, our freedoms, and even our social ties. We must take the time to empathise with all those struck by the crisis and also seize this opportunity to imagine together the earth that we want to inhabit in the future – in all its wonders and beauty, in the face of all the challenges ahead of us.”
“Earth Perspectives envisions the earth we want to live on together by welcoming multiple perspectives – not only human perspectives but also those of plants, animals, and nature,” he continues. “A glacier’s perspective deviates from that of a human. The same goes for a river. On Earth Day, I want to advocate – as on any other day – that we recognise these various perspectives and, together, celebrate their co-existence.”
Each of the dots will place focus on a different place on the planet under particular threat from the climate emergency, from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to the Ganges in India, as well as the Greenland ice sheet. Others are sites of previous environmental disasters, like Chernobyl in Ukraine. The hope is that the project sparks conversations between those who are taking part.
Of Serpentine Galleries’ Back to Earth project itself, which will run throughout the Galleries’ programmes offsite and online in 2020 and the years beyond, Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director and Bettina Korek, chief executive, say: “For our 50th anniversary programme, we have invited artists, thinkers, designers and architects from across the world to create works that respond to the climate emergency ... We must look to artists for guidance on how to shape the future and we are honoured that Olafur Eliasson has produced a new work for Back to Earth.”
The Serpentine Galleries’ Back to Earth programme runs until April 22, 2021.
