Questioning the Body, Space, and Nature: A Conversation with Olafur Eliasson
The body enters a future, standing restlessly in the midst of the unknown: this becomes a real effect of encountering Olafur Eliasson’s work. Oliafur’s art illuminates the fragile relationship between humans and nature, where every shadow is cast from the play of light. In it, a question arises: are we, as beings, meant to “pass through” this planet, and do we carry any awareness towards those around us? This forms the spellbinding power of the Danish-Icelandic artist’s work, as his exhibition Your curious journey has just opened for the first time in Indonesia. The retrospect transforms every corner of Museum MACAN into a kind of void, and grants its viewers a momentary pause from the world’s noise to assess how we see our everyday lives and their entanglement with its surrounding environment.
This intellectually rich selection of art was born from someone who is unexpectedly warm and humorous–our first impression as we sat before Olafur Eliasson, listening to his speech — that clearly showed an expertise shaped by three decades of artistic dedication. It was a privilege to ask him directly about his practices, which, to us, feel deeply embodied.
Few would guess that much of Eliasson’s understanding of embodiment came from his teenage years as a breakdancer. “I was obsessed with how one can use movement to create space,” he recalled. Dance taught young Eliasson to think of space not merely as architecture but as a structure humans could design–and redesign–together. “I try to bring this awareness to everything I do as an artist.”
This embodied practice is evident in Multiple shadow house, where visitors directly determine how the artwork functions through their own movement. The involvement of the body shifts the visitor’s role from spectator to co-creator. In Beauty (1993), for instance, a rainbow emerges only through one’s personal vantage point on a fine mist illuminated by light–entirely dependent on each visitor’s perspective on the phenomenon. These experiences, Eliasson believes, are not only embodied but also transcultural. They have no fixed symbolism requiring viewers to consult wall texts; yet the cultural contexts each person brings inevitably play a role. Here, art meets sociology, perception meets habit, and the body meets social structures.
Eliasson also believes that bodily control and habit appear even in works that seem unrelated to the body, such as Ventilator (1997), where a suspended fan carves movement through space, forming a relationship with its viewers. Our bodies–down to something as simple as our eyes–are invited to track its path. From afar or up close, the work quietly prompts each viewer to calculate the space around the fan’s motion: an invisible but real activation of the body.
Speaking of spatial awareness, the artist admits that when handling large installations or major exhibitions, he seeks a physical sense of the space that will hold the work, though it’s not always technically possible. When direct access is limited, he relies on scale models built in his Berlin studio. These models allow him to develop a physical closeness to the exhibition site even without being there.
Olafur Eliasson is known not only for his approach to space and the body but also for his views on ecological issues. Many of his works respond to the worsening environmental degradation happening worldwide. He does not hide his frustration with global political developments that fuel misinformation and hinder climate action. But he refuses to sink into pessimism. “I believe we always have the potential to build communities and face these issues with others,” he said.
This motivation appears in works such as The last seven days of glacial ice (2024), which visualizes the melting of ice, and The glacier melt series, which documents the shrinkage of Icelandic glaciers over two decades. By turning something distant and abstract into something visible and tangible, Eliasson aims to foster emotional proximity and empathy. Yet he acknowledges that context shapes urgency. “I understand that Jakarta is acutely threatened by climate change and sea-level rise,” he noted. “And people will not need the kind of awareness-building messaging that is usual in northern Europe.”
Instead, he finds a source of hope in children and young people. Through Earth Speakr, an AR-based digital artwork, he gives younger generations a platform to express their hopes and anxieties about the future. “What they had to say was highly encouraging for me,” he told us. “I was impressed by their reflection and how they focused on the future, where so many of my generation are stuck in the past.”
Nature is also embedded in Eliasson’s mediums; he translates “eternal” phenomena like light, air, and magnetic fields into perceptible experiences using temporary materials. He seems able to convert something elusive into something artistically tangible. Rendering the invisible visible lies at the heart of his practice. For him, even tiny shifts in light or a sudden breeze can open new awareness. “Often it takes very little to become conscious of something you have long been unaware of. That could be a change in the lighting, an unexpected breeze, or even the removal of a sense that you take for granted.”
He shared that Yellow corridor (1997) is one of his most radical works in this regard. By bathing an entire space in pure yellow light, he reduces the complexity of the color spectrum. After some time, the visitor’s eyes adjust—yellow becomes white. But stepping outside, the world suddenly appears washed in complementary violet. The work not only alters visual perception but forces viewers to become aware of how their senses construct their experience of the world. “It’s quite dramatic! Through this experience viewers become aware of what their own perceptual apparatuses contribute to what they see. By extension, you see how your own view of the world is distorted by how you access it.”
It is not easy for any artist to map a creative direction over three decades, especially one whose works are so expansive and participatory. Yet amid his evolving practice, one thing stands firm: a persistent ecological urgency. Still, Eliasson never lets his practice stagnate. For him, it is fascinating to witness how ideas evolve and how works grow over time, alongside the changing world. “There are many points of input for every work of art. A lot of the themes derive from the thinking and working processes that go on at my studio in collaboration with my team. Finding fresh ways to solve problems that have arisen in previous works can raise new possibilities, which can then lead to invention, to new artworks,” he explained.
Ultimately, Eliasson describes himself as a deeply intuitive thinker. He tries to linger as long as possible in the pre-verbal phase of an idea–dwelling with the hazy shadows of a concept before attempting to fix it on paper, whether through drawing or writing. In an art world that increasingly demands conceptual clarity from the outset, this approach feels almost subversive. Olafur Eliasson chooses uncertainty as fertile creative ground, mirroring the world itself: uncertain, shifting, alive.
Through light, mist, ice, shadow, and space, Olafur Eliasson invites us to feel ecological awareness through the body. Amid climate crisis and rapid global change, his works call us to ask: what are we seeing, how do we see it, and how does that experience shape our understanding of this planet–our mother, our home. Eliasson’s art does not offer simple answers; instead, it poses larger questions for us to confront together. And in a world shaped by uncertainty, perhaps that shared questioning is where hope truly begins.
