The character arc of Olafur Eliasson
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 5 February 1967 in Copenhagen to Icelandic parents who had emigrated the year before, his father to find work as a cook and his mother as a seamstress. Between then and now sit his parents separating when he was eight, summers and holidays in Iceland with a father who had become an artist, a first solo show at fifteen, four years as a break dancer ending in a Scandinavian championship, an art academy from 1989 to 1995, a studio founded in Berlin, rivers dyed fluorescent green without warning, an artificial sun in the Turbine Hall in 2003 that two million people came to see, four waterfalls in New York in 2008, a commission for the 2012 Olympics rejected over funding, and a solar lamp company founded the same year. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Olafur Eliasson?
He calls break dancing his first art. Then he made a sun.
His parents emigrated from Iceland to Copenhagen the year before he was born, his father to work as a cook and his mother as a seamstress. They separated when he was eight. He lived with his mother and stepfather, and his father, by then an artist, moved back to Iceland, where the family spent summers and holidays. That split between a Danish city and an Icelandic landscape is the raw material of nearly everything he has made since.
At fifteen he had his first solo show, landscape drawings and gouaches at a small alternative gallery. But he counts his break dancing in the mid 1980s as his first artworks: with two school friends he formed a group, performed at clubs and dance halls for four years, and won the Scandinavian championship. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1995, and when the academy gave him a travel budget in 1990 he went to New York, worked as a studio assistant and read phenomenology and Gestalt psychology.
He moved to Cologne in 1993, then to Berlin, and in 1995 founded a studio he calls a laboratory for spatial research. From 1996 he worked with an architect and geometry expert twenty five years his senior, a former friend of Buckminster Fuller, whose knowledge of geometry runs through the lamps, pavilions and tunnels ever since. In 1998 he found that a non toxic powder used to trace leaks in plumbing could dye a whole river fluorescent green, and he did it in Berlin, Stockholm and Tokyo, always without warning. In Stockholm pedestrians thought the water had been poisoned. That is what first made his name abroad.
In 2003 he represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale, married an art historian, and installed The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. It filled the hall with a fine mist and a vast half sun of monofrequency lamps, with the whole ceiling mirrored, so visitors could see themselves as tiny shadows against an orange sky. People lay on their backs on the floor and waved. It ran six months and drew two million visitors, many of them more than once, and has been called a milestone in contemporary art.
Prizes followed through the 2000s, a pavilion in 2007, four man made waterfalls in New York harbour in 2008, a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, a professorship in Berlin from 2009 and an institute for spatial experiments inside his own studio. He was to make an outdoor work for the 2012 Olympics and it was rejected over funding. That same year he and an engineer founded a company making solar powered lamps. He has put blocks of glacial ice in city squares, made the trophy for a science prize, founded a second studio for architecture with a long standing collaborator in 2014, taught in Addis Ababa since that year, and been appointed a goodwill ambassador by a United Nations agency in 2019. On what he tells people who look at his work: make your wish, make your dream, do something.
The moments
Olafur Eliasson's timeline.
The 1960s
Born in Copenhagen
Everyday. Two Icelanders in a Danish city, a year in.
The 1970s
His parents separate
Setback, and it changed everything. Eight years old, and from then on he belonged to two countries.
The 1980s
A first show at fifteen
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Fifteen, with a room of his own drawings on the wall.
A break dancing championship
Milestone, and it changed everything. He still calls this his first art, not the drawings.
The Royal Danish Academy
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Six years, and he left in the middle of them to go to New York.
The 1990s
New York, and phenomenology
Milestone, and it changed his direction. The reading that decided what the work would be about: perception.
A studio in Berlin
Milestone, and it changed everything. A former train depot, and the word laboratory rather than studio.
A geometer twenty five years older
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A much older man who knew the maths, and a partnership that lasted.
Ask permission, or just do it
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: pour it in unannounced, taken, or announce it first. Green river first made his name internationally. In 2003 he represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale and installed The Weather Project at Tate Modern, which drew two million visitors in six months.
He dyes a river green
Milestone, and it changed everything. Three cities, no warning, and a lot of alarmed people looking down.
The 2000s
He represents Denmark in Venice
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A pavilion, a wedding and a son, in one year.
A sun in the Turbine Hall
Milestone, and it changed everything. Two million people, most of them lying on the floor.
A pavilion and a first prize
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Five prizes in four years, and then the first of a new one.
Four waterfalls in New York
Milestone, and it changed everything. Waterfalls in a harbour that never had any.
A professor, and an institute
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A teaching institute, built inside his own working studio.
The 2010s
The Olympic work is dropped
Setback, and it changed everything. Commissioned, designed, and then dropped over money.
Little Sun
Milestone, and it changed everything. A lamp, for people with no electricity to switch on.
Ice, and a second studio
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Blocks of glacial ice, left in a city square to melt.
A goodwill ambassador
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A title from an agency, and a trophy shaped like a galaxy.
The 2020s
A Japanese arts prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. One of the largest arts prizes there is, at fifty six.
He got two million people to lie down on a concrete floor and look up at a light he had built. What he set moving is work that treats weather, ice and daylight as materials, and a company whose product is a lamp for people who do not have electricity.
In his words
Quotes by Olafur Eliasson
Not just to make a mark, but make a mark that matters to you. Make your wish, make your dream. Do something.
I also think it's important not to lose sight of what is actually going quite well. There is reason for hope.
What he wrote
Books by Olafur Eliasson
- 2002
Olafur Eliasson
Published by Phaidon, written with Madeleine Grynsztejn, Daniel Birnbaum and Michael Speaks. The first full survey of the work, with his own voice in it.
- 2012
The Transdisciplinary Studio
Published by Sternberg Press in Berlin. His account of how a studio that calls itself a laboratory actually works.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
His is a childhood split between two countries, four years of break dancing he counts as art, and a sun built in a power station. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Olafur Eliasson: frequently asked questions
What people ask about his line.
What is Olafur Eliasson's character arc?
What is Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project?
What is Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun?
Did Olafur Eliasson really dye rivers green?
Why does Olafur Eliasson call break dancing his first art?
What prizes has Olafur Eliasson won?
Where does this timeline of Olafur Eliasson's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with his.
Sources
- Olafur Eliasson, English Wikipedia biography.
- Tate Modern records for The Weather Project, Unilever Series, 2003.
- Public Art Fund record for The New York City Waterfalls, 2008.
- United Nations Development Programme announcement, 22 September 2019.
- Award records for the Joan Miro Prize, 2007, and the Praemium Imperiale, 2023.
- No Wikiquote page exists for him, so the quotations below are taken from the record above.
- Eliasson, presenting the Moon platform, November 2013.
- Eliasson, on his appointment as a goodwill ambassador, September 2019.