Known for his sculpture, painting, photography, film, civic space interventions and installations, the Palace of Versailles is his most recent site for experimentation, with a towering waterfall appeared to fall from nowhere due to mindbending mirror trickery, fog machines and more.
That’s because art is about engagement for the Danish-Icelandic artist, with his installations at Versailles described by Domus as “displacements and destabilisation”, in his own words Eliasson says: “The Versailles that I have been dreaming up is a place that empowers everyone. It invites visitors to take control of the authorship of their experience instead of simply consuming and being dazzled by the grandeur. It asks them to exercise their senses, to embrace the unexpected, to drift through the gardens, and to feel the landscape take shape through their movement.”
Also cofounder of the Little Sun solar-powered lamp that was launched at the Tate Modern in London in July 2012 "in total darkness - to illustrate the plight of the 1.6 billion people worldwide who are without access to a reliable source of electricity," and highlighted locally at the 2014 Design Indaba, Eliasson's upcoming Design Indaba talk is set to be equally inspiring. Design Indaba Festival runs from 1 to 3 March 2017 and a little birdie tells us there are still some early bird tickets available, visit the Design Indaba Festival page to grab some tickets before they're sold out!
If that's not enough, you can click here for Eliasson's Design Indaba profile, visit his personal website and follow him on Twitter for more.
