Olafur Eliasson | |
|---|---|
 Olafur in 2015 | |
| Born | Ólafur Elíasson 5 February 1967 (1967-02-05) (age 59) Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Known for | Installation art |
Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic:Ólafur Elíasson; born 5 February 1967)[1] is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience.
In 1995, Olafur establishedStudio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. In 2014, Olafur and his long-time collaborator – German architect Sebastian Behmann – foundedStudio Other Spaces, an office for architecture and art.
Olafur represented Denmark at the 50thVenice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installedThe Weather Project, which has been described as "a milestone in contemporary art",[2] in the Turbine Hall ofTate Modern, London.
Olafur has engaged in a number of public projects, including the interventionGreen river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001; theSerpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, London, a temporary pavilion designed with the Norwegian architectKjetil Trædal Thorsen; andTheNew York City Waterfalls, commissioned byPublic Art Fund in 2008. Olafur also created theBreakthrough Prize trophy. Like much of his work, the sculpture explores the common ground between art and science. It is molded into the shape of atoroid, recalling natural forms found from black holes and galaxies to seashells and coils of DNA.[3]
Olafur was a professor at theBerlin University of the Arts from 2009 to 2014 and has been an adjunct professor at theAlle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa since 2014. His studio is based in Berlin, Germany.[4][5]
Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen in 1967 to Elías Hjörleifsson and Ingibjörg Olafsdottir.[6] His parents had emigrated to Copenhagen from Iceland in 1966, his father to find work as a cook and his mother as a seamstress.[6] He was 8 when his parents separated.[7] He lived with his mother and his stepfather, a stockbroker.[6] His father, then an artist, moved back to Iceland, where their family spent summers and holidays.[7]
At 15, Olafur had his first solo show where he exhibited landscape drawings and gouaches at a small alternative gallery in Denmark.[7] However, Olafur considered his "break-dancing" during the mid-1980s to be his first artworks.[8] With two school friends, he formed a group that called themselves the Harlem Gun Crew and with whom he performed at clubs and dance halls for four years, eventually winning the Scandinavian championship.[6]
Olafur studied at theRoyal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1995. In 1990, when he was awarded a travel budget by the Royal Danish Academy, Olafur went to New York where he started working as a studio assistant for artist Christian Eckart inWilliamsburg, Brooklyn, and reading texts on phenomenology andGestalt psychology.[9]
Olafur received his degree from the academy in 1995, after having moved in 1993 to Cologne for a year, and then to Berlin, where he has since maintained a studio.[10] First located in a three-story former train depot right next door to theHamburger Bahnhof,[6][9] the studio moved to a former brewery inPrenzlauer Berg in 2008.
In 1996, Olafur started working withEinar Thorsteinn, an architect andgeometry expert 25 years his senior as well as a former friend ofBuckminster Fuller.[11] The first piece they created called8900054, was a stainless-steel dome 30 feet (9.1 m) wide and 7 feet (2.1 m) high, designed to be seen as if it were growing from the ground. Though the effect is an illusion, the mind has a hard time believing that the structure is not part of a much grander one developing from deep below the surface. Thorsteinn's knowledge ofgeometry andspace has been integrated into Olafur's artistic production, often seen in his geometric lamp works as well as his pavilions, tunnels and camera obscura projects.[12]
For many projects, the artist works collaboratively with specialists in various fields, among them the architects Thorsteinn and Sebastian Behmann (both of whom have been frequent collaborators, Behmann working on the Kirk Kapital headquarters onVejle Fjord in Denmark, completed in 2018),[13] authorSvend Åge Madsen (The Blind Pavilion), landscape architect Gunther Vogt (The Mediated Motion), architecture theoristCedric Price (Chaque matin je me sens différent, chaque soir je me sens le même), and architectKjetil Thorsen (Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2007).[citation needed] Studio Olafur Eliasson, which the artist founded as a "laboratory for spatial research", employs a team of architects, engineers, craftsmen, and assistants (some 30 members as of 2008) who work together to conceive and construct artworks such as installations and sculptures, as well as large-scale projects and commissions.[14] Olafur is influenced byBruce Nauman,[10] as well asJames Turrell andRobert Irwin.[15]
As professor at theBerlin University of the Arts, Olafur Eliasson founded the Institute for Spatial Experiments (Institut für Raumexperimente, IfREX), which opened within his studio building in April 2009.Huffington Post named Olafur one of "18 green artists who are making climate change and conservation a priority."[16]
Nadine Wojcik, after attending theIn real life exhibition in 2019, dubbedBeauty (1993) a "simple yet powerful water installation that evokes a rainbow via spotlights.”[2] Anna Souter called the work "a reminder of the intensely fragile beauty of the natural world and its elements. [...] it’s simply and superbly beautiful".[17]
Early works by Olafur consist of oscillating electric fans hanging from the ceiling.Ventilator (1997) swings back and forth and around, rotating on its axis.[18]Quadrible light ventilator mobile (2002–2007) is a rotating electrically powered mobile comprising a searchlight and four fans blowing air around the exhibition room and scanning it with the light cone.[19] In a 2008 review of theTake Your Time retrospective (at theMuseum of Modern Art), Peter Schjeldahl dubbedVentilator "a witty finesse of the MOMA atrium’s space-splurging grandiosity"
The weather project was installed at the London'sTate Modern in 2003 as part of the popularUnilever series. The installation filled the open space of the gallery's Turbine Hall.
Olafur usedhumidifiers to create a fine mist in the air via a mixture of sugar and water, as well as a semicircular disc (reflected by the ceiling mirror to appear circular)[20] made up of hundreds ofmonochromatic lamps which radiated yellow light. The ceiling of the hall was covered with a hugemirror, in which visitors could see themselves as tiny black shadows against a mass of orange light symbolizing the sun.[21] Many visitors responded to this exhibition by lying on their backs and waving their hands and legs. Art criticBrian O'Doherty described this as viewers "intoxicated with their own narcissism as they ponder themselves elevated into the sky."[22]
The Weather Project was highly successful.[15] Open for six months, the work reportedly attracted two million visitors, many of whom were repeat visitors.[6] O'Doherty was positive about the piece when talking toFrieze magazine in 2003, saying that it was "the first time I've seen the enormously dismal space—like a coffin for a giant—socialized in an effective way."[22]The Telegraph's Richard Dorment praised its "beauty and power".[23] It remains his most famous work[6][4] and ranked 11th in a poll byThe Guardian of the best art since 2000, withJonathan Jones describing Olafur as "one of the century’s most significant artists.".[24] The Weather Project attempted to give viewers the impression that they were near the sun inside the clouds, but in actuality, a large semicircle was suspended from a mirror ceiling, giving the impression that the reflection was a full circle. The mirrors on the ceiling produced the image of the space below that was visible. The audience completed the effect by frequently being observed lying down on their backs, staring at the ceiling, and making various motions to observe their reflections. This was done by both adults and children.[25]
Olafur has been developing various experiments with atmospheric density in exhibition spaces. InRoom For One Colour (1998), a corridor lit bylow pressure sodium lamps, the participants find themselves in a room filled with monochromatic yellow light which affects their perception of colours. Another installation,360 degrees Room For All Colours (2002), is a round light-sculpture where participants lose their sense of space and perspective, and experience being subsumed by an intense light.[26] Olafur's later installationDin blinde passager (Your blind passenger) (2010), commissioned by theArken Museum of Modern Art, is a 90-metre-long tunnel. Entering the tunnel, the visitor is surrounded by dense fog. With visibility at just 1.5 metres, museumgoers have to use senses other than sight to orient themselves in relation to their surroundings.[27] After attending the 2019In real life exhibition, Souter deemedYour blind passenger one of Olafur's finest works, reporting that she felt "alone in the universe. [...] I thought I could see my own irises, flashing as a ring of blue in front of me, and I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears."[17] ForFeelings are facts, the first time Olafur has worked with Chinese architectYansong Ma as well as his first exhibition in China, Olafur introduces condensed banks of artificially produced fog into the gallery ofUllens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Hundreds of fluorescent lights are installed in the ceiling as a grid of red, green, and blue zones.
In 1998, Olafur discovered thaturanin, a readily available nontoxic powder used to trace leaks in plumbing systems, could dye entire rivers a sickly fluorescent green. Olafur conducted a test run in theSpree River during the 1998Berlin Biennale, scattering a handful of powder from a bridge nearMuseum Island. He began introducing the environmentally safe dye to rivers inMoss, Norway (1998), Bremen (1998), Los Angeles (1999),Stockholm (2000) and Tokyo (2001) — always without advance warning.[7] He first achieved international prominence withGreen river, which initially made Stockholm pedestrians concerned that the city's water had been tainted.[28]
At Denmark'sLouisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2014–2015, Olafur created a riverbed installation. He compiled natural rocks, dirt, and water to transform the gallery space into a landscape and titled the piece, "Riverbed". Olafur captures physical phenomena in a way that appears both real and slightly artificial, while contained in a constructed space that invites viewers to participate.Riverbed becomes an immersive experience, using all five senses, in which the individuals can either follow or curiously step away from. Freedom exists in both of these actions, allowing the participant to discover a paradox or enter a void, questioning their true freedom and will happening within a designed system.
In a 2014 review of the exhibition, Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner said that Olafur "cuts us off from the surroundings and imports a different and rough beauty"; they described the view of the stony landscape as "meticulously framed". However, they also speculated that Olafur aimed to make viewers see Louisiana differently and failed, creating a work that differs little from Louisiana: "The question about [...] how it really made us see things in new ways is still unanswered."[29]
In regular intervals, Olafur presents grids of various color photographs, all taken in Iceland. Each group of images focuses on a single subject: volcanoes, hot springs and huts isolated in the wilderness.[30] In his very first series he attempted to shoot all of Iceland's bridges. A later series from 1996 documented the aftermath of a volcanic eruption under theVatnajökull. Often these photographs are shot from the air, in a small rented plane traditionally used by mapmakers.[7] Arranged in a grid, the photographs recall the repetitive images of the German photographersBernd and Hilla Becher.[7]
This project, a light installation commissioned for theVenice Biennale by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in collaboration withBritish architectDavid Adjaye, was shown from 1 August to 31 October 2005 on the island ofSan Lazzaro in the lagoon near Venice, Italy. A temporary pavilion was constructed on the grounds of the monastery to house the exhibit, consisting of a square room painted black with one source of illumination–a thin, continuous line of light set into all four walls of the room at the viewers eye-level, serving as a horizontal division between above and below.[31] In 2007, the pavilion was relocated to the island ofLopud, Croatia near the city ofDubrovnik. Since then, it has on several occasions reopened to the public.[32][33][34]
Olafur was commissioned byBMW in 2007 to create the sixteenth art car for theBMW Art Car Project. Based on the hydrogen-powered[7]BMW H2R concept vehicle, Olafur and his team removed the automobile's alloy body and instead replaced it with a new interlocking framework of reflective steel bars and mesh. Layers of ice were created by spraying approximately 530 gallons of water during a period of several days upon the structure. On display, the frozen sculpture is glowing from within.Your mobile expectations: BMW H2R project was on special display in a temperature controlled room at theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 2007 to 2008[35] and at thePinakothek der Moderne, Munich, in 2008.
Olafur was commissioned byThe Public Art Fund to create four man-made waterfalls, calledThe New York City Waterfalls, ranging in a height from 90 to 120 ft., inNew York Harbor. The installation ran from 26 June through 13 October 2008. At $15.5 million, it was the most expensivepublic arts project sinceChristo and Jeanne-Claude's installation ofThe Gates inCentral Park.[36]
Dedicated on 15 May 2009, this permanent sculpture stands atBard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The installation is based on the original Icelandic parliament,Althingi, one of the world's earliest democratic forums. The artist envisions the project as a place where students and visitors can gather to relax, discuss ideas, or have an argument. The parliament of reality emphasizes that negotiation should be the core of any educational scheme. The man-made island is surrounded by a 30-foot circular lake, 24 trees, and wild grasses. The 100-foot-diameter (30 m) island is composed of a cut-bluestone,compass-like floor pattern (based upon meridian lines and navigational charts), on top of which 30 river-washed boulders create an outdoor seating area for students and the public to gather. The island is reached by a 20-foot-long stainless steel lattice-canopied bridge, creating the effect that visitors are entering a stage or outdoor forum. Frogs gather in this wiry mesh at night, creating an enjoyable symphony.
For his ongoing series ofColour experiment paintings – which began in 2009 – Olafur started analyzing pigments, paint production and application of colour in order to mix paint in the exact colour for each nanometre of the visible light spectrum. This body of work features color wheels that are created in a variety of spectrums. He also explores the work ofCaspar David Friedrich.[37] In 2014, Olafur analyzed seven paintings byJ. M. W. Turner to createTurner colour experiments, which isolate and record Turner's use of light and colour.[38]
In April 2023, his artworkColour experiment no. 114 was used as the artwork for the Peter Gabriel song "i/o", from the forthcoming album of the same name.
Olafur designed the facade ofHarpa,Reykjavík's new concert hall and conference centre which was completed in 2011. In close collaboration with his studio team andHenning Larsen Architects, the designers of the building, Olafur has designed a unique facade consisting of large quasi bricks, a stackable twelve sided module in steel and glass. The facade will reflect the city life and the different light composed by the movements of the sun and varying weather. During the night the glass bricks are lit up by different colored LED lights. The building was opened on 13 May 2011, and garnered acclaim.[39]
Olafur's artworkYour rainbow panorama consists of a circular, 150 metres (490 ft) long and 3 metres (9.8 ft) wide corridor made of glass in every color of the spectrum. It has a diameter of 52 metres (171 ft) and is mounted on 3.5 metres (11 ft) high columns on top of the roof of theARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum inAarhus. It opened in May 2011. Visitors can walk through the corridor and have a panoramic view of the city.[40]Construction cost 60 millionDanish kroner and was funded by theRealdania foundation.[41]
Olafur's idea was chosen in 2007 among five other proposals in a bidding process by a panel of judges. At night the artwork is lit from the inside by spotlights in the floor.[citation needed]
In November 2013, at theFalling Walls Conference, Olafur presented withAi Weiwei their collaborationMoon, an open digital platform that allows users to draw on a replica of the moon via their web browser. Eliasson presented the platform as "a sphere on which you can make a mark. Not just to make a mark, but make a mark that matters to you. Make your wish, make your dream. Do something." Accessible to anyone, it attracted over 35,000 participants within the first six weeks.[42][43]
From December 17, 2014, to February 23, 2015,Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. The artworks appear as a sequence of events along a journey. Moving through passageways and expansive installations, visitors become part of a choreography of darkness, light, geometry, and reflections. Along the way, optical devices, models, and a meteorite reflect Olafur's on-going investigations into the mechanisms of perception and the construction of space.
The relation between bodily reaction and art as well as the raising of awareness of climate change is explored inIce Watch (2014-2018). With the installation of enormous ice blocks in various places of the world (Copenhagen in 2014, Paris in 2015 and London in 2018), Olafur responds to major Climate Change conferences and reports. With his project beginning in 2014, he transports twelve ice-blocks from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord in Greenland to the streets of Copenhagen. The ice-blocks are placed in the shape of a circle. Each ice block weighs between 1.5 and 5 tonnes.[44][45] In November 2015, Olafur together with geologist Minik Rosing again transported twelve enormous blocks of ice from Greenland to Place du Panthéon in Paris. The installation was timed with the UN Climate Change Conference that was held in Paris. The installation was once again repeated in 2018, when Olafur divided a total of thirty ice-blocks between two locations in London: 24 blocks at the banks of the Tate Modern museum, and 6 blocks before the Bloomberg headquarters.[44]
Timothy Morton listsIce Watch as an example of how art can help humans understand their relationship with nonhumans amidst ecological crisis, arguing that it "seriously stretched or went beyond prefabricated concepts, in a friendly and simple, yet deep way".[17] Louise Hornby argued thatIce Watch has "poignancy" but also “funnels time and melting ice through the spectator’s own experience [...] The imperative to watch asserts the central agency of the experiencing subject", which is unfitting because the "glaciers will melt, whether or not we see them”.[45]
Commissioned by Mei and Allan Warburg for the Donum Estatewinery in Sonoma, California, in 2019, theVertical Panorama Pavilion is built to accommodate up to 12 guests and inspired by the history of circular calendars. The pavilion's roof features 832 laminated panels of recycled glass in 24 colors and is supported by 12 stainless-steel columns. From afar, only the translucent rainbow glass tiled canopy can be seen.[46]
In October 2025, Eliasson's first permanent public artwork in the United Kingdom was opened atFallaize Park, in the Oxford North innovation district. It comprises eight illuminated sculptures that represent planetary bodies, and were inspired byorreries in the history of science museum in Oxford. The sculptures provided a centre-piece for science and theatre activities during the 2025Oxford Science and Ideas Festival.[47][48][49]
In 2005–2007, Olafur and classical violin makerHans Jóhannsson completed work on the development of a new instrument, with the objective to reinterpret the traditions of 17th- and 18th-century violin making using today's technology and a contemporary visual aesthetic.[50]
Commissioned byLouis Vuitton in 2006, lamps titledEye See You were installed in theChristmas windows of Louis Vuitton stores; a lamp titledYou See Me went on permanent display atLouis Vuitton Fifth Avenue, New York.[51] Each deliberately low-tech apparatus, of which there are about 400, is composed of a monofrequency light source and a parabolic mirror.[52] All fees from the project were donated to 121Ethiopia.org, a charitable foundation initially established by Olafur and his wife to renovate an orphanage.[52] Cynthia Zarin ofThe New Yorker describedYour wave is (2006) as a "major work".[6]
In 2007, Olafur developed the stage design forPhaedra, an opera production at theBerlin State Opera.
In a 2008 review of theTake Your Time retrospective (at theMuseum of Modern Art), Peter Schjeldahl described Olafur as far superior to other "crowd-pleasing installational artists" of his generation; he wrote that the retrospective has some filler but also "lovely, subtly disorienting effects". He praised the artist as avoiding excessive political activism andMatthew Barney's "implications of mystical portent". Schjeldahl interpreted the artist as raising awareness "of the neurological susceptibilities that condition all of what we see and may think we know.”[10] Reviewing the same retrospective, Lauren Weinberg ofTime Out praisedBeauty (1993); the "discomfiting" works like 1997'sRoom for one colour andVentilator; and the works involving the sense of smell, such asMoss wall (1994) andSoil quasi bricks (2003). She argued thatMoss wall "evokes Scandinavia more powerfully than Eliasson’s dozens of photographs of rivers, caves and other natural features of Iceland, which fill one room of the show."[18]
His seventh solo exhibition,Volcanos and shelters atTanya Bonakdar Gallery, is about nature and specifically Iceland. InThe New York Times, Roberta Smith praised it as his "most gimmick-free [exhibition] in a while. The refreshing back-to-basics mood is a welcome break from the immersive complexities of his recent perception-altering environments.”[30]
Along withJames Corner's landscape architecture firm Field Operations and architecture firmDiller Scofidio + Renfro, Olafur was part of the design team for New York'sHigh Line park.[53] Olafur was originally supposed to create an outdoor-based artwork for the2012 Summer Olympics; however, his proposed £1 million ($1.6 million) projectTake A Deep Breath – which involved recording people breathing[54] – was rejected due to funding problems.[55]
In 2012 Olafur and engineer Frederik Ottesen foundedLittle Sun, a company that produces solar powered LED lamps.[56]
In 2014 it was announced that his workKissing Earth, representing two globes, was to be placed in front of the newly builtRotterdam Centraal train station in the Netherlands. After protests by Rotterdam residents and concerns over the expected costs the impopular project was cancelled in 2016. The square in front of the station remained empty.[57]
It was reported in October 2019 that Olafur was commissioned by theGerman government to create a "pan-European work of art" for the GermanEuropean Councilpresidency in the second half of 2020.[5]
Laura Cumming awarded theIn real life survey four out of five stars, especially praisingYour blind passenger. She found some of the art (like the ice boulders from Greenland) didactic but still wrote, "Each piece conveys the strange extremes of Iceland with all the condensed power of a sonnet".[58] Anna Souter, however, expressed a lukewarm view of theIn real life exhibition inHyperallergic, writing thatRoom for one colour was more powerful at London's National Gallery than at Tate Modern and thatYour uncertain shadow (colour) (2010) "feels like little more than a clever, visual trick." She also reported that some in the art world find Olafur's work unsettling because "[m]ost people like Olafur Eliasson, and many curators and critics don’t like it when most people like the same things they do."[17]
Olafur'sAR Wunderkammer project, available through an app, is being used to place objects in the user's environment. These objects include burning suns, extraterrestrial rocks, and rare animals.[59]
According toThe Guardian, the works by Olafur that he considers highlights areFive Dimensional Pavilion (1998),Model room (2003),Sphere (2003),Your Invisible House (2003),The Parliament of Reality (2006–09), the facades ofHarpa (2005–11),Your Rainbow Panorama (2006-2011), the 2007Serpentine Gallery Pavilion,Colour activity house (2010),The Triangular Sky (2013), andCirkelbroen (2015).[60] He deemedBeauty (1993) andThe presence of absence pavilion (2019) the highlights of the 2019–2020In real life exhibition.[61]
Olafur had his first solo show was withNicolaus Schafhausen in Cologne in 1993, before moving to Berlin in 1994.[6] In 1996, Olafur had his first show in the United States atTanya Bonakdar Gallery. TheSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) organized Olafur's first major survey in the United StatesTake Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, from September 2007 to February 2008.[62] Curated by the director of theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,Madeleine Grynsztejn (then Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA), in close collaboration with the artist, the major survey spanned the artist's career from 1993 and 2007. The exhibit included site-specific installations, large-scale immersive environments, freestanding sculpture, photography, and special commissions seen through a succession of interconnected rooms and corridors. The museum's skylight bridge was turned into an installation titledOne-way colour tunnel.[63] Following its San Francisco debut, the exhibit embarked on an international tour to theMuseum of Modern Art, andP.S.1. Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2008; theDallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, 2008–2009; theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2009; and theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2009–2010.[citation needed]
He has also had major solo exhibitions at, among others,Kunsthaus Bregenz,Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, andZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe (2001);Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2004);Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2006); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa (2009); theMartin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2010) and theLangen Foundation,Museum Insel Hombroich,Neuss (2015).[citation needed] Olafur has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including theSão Paulo Biennial and theIstanbul Biennial (1997),Venice Biennale (1999, 2001 and 2005), and theCarnegie International (1999),OPePalace of Versailles (2016),The Parliament of Possibilities at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (2016-2017).[citation needed]
From July 2019 to through to January 2020,Tate Modern showed the exhibitionIn real life.[64]
Until July 2025,Open, held at the MOCA Geffen Contemporary, is Olafur's first major exhibition in Los Angeles which consists of installations of light and geometry including a large mirrored geodesic sphere.[65]
Olafur's work is held in the following permanent collections:
TheSpiral Pavilion, conceived in 1999 for theVenice Biennale and today on display atKunsthalle Bielefeld, brought Olafur Eliasson the Benesse Prize by theBenesse Corporation.[72] In 2004, Olafur won theNykredit Architecture Prize[73] and theEckersberg Medal for painting.[74] The following year he was awarded thePrince Eugen Medal for sculpture[75] and in 2006, theCrown Prince Couple's Culture Prize.[76] In 2006, he received theAustrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.[77] In 2007, he was awarded the first Joan Miró Prize by theJoan Miró Foundation.[78]
In 2010, Olafur was the recipient of aQuadriga award. He returned his award one year later after it was revealed thatVladimir Putin would be recognized in 2011.[79] In October 2013, he was honored with theGoslarer Kaiserring.[80][81] That same year, Olafur andHenning Larsen Architects were recipients of theMies van der Rohe Award for theirHarpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In 2014, Olafur was the recipient of the $100,000 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The prize is considered an investment in the recipient's future creative work, rather than a prize for a particular project or lifetime of achievement. The awardee becomes anartist in residence at MIT, studying and teaching for a period of time.[82]
On the occasion of astate visit to Germany in June 2013, thePresident of Iceland,Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, visited Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin.[83]
Brazilian filmmakerKarim Aïnouz's documentary piece,Domingo,[84] shot from his encounter with Olafur during the 17th Videobrasil Festival, had its world premiere at Rio International Film Festival] in 2014,[85] and was released on DVD in 2015.
In 2003, Olafur married the Danish art historian Marianne Krogh Jensen, whom he met when she curated the Danish Pavilion for the 1997São Paulo Art Biennial.[6] They adopted both their son (in 2003) and their daughter (in 2006) inAddis Ababa, Ethiopia. The family had lived in a house designed by architect Andreas Lauritz Clemmensen[86] inHellerup near Copenhagen,[6] but Olafur and Jensen are no longer married. Olafur currently lives and works in Berlin. Olafur speaks Icelandic, Danish, German, and English.[6] He also has a younger half-sister named Victoria Eliasdottir who is a chef.[4]
On 22 September 2019, Olafur was appointed asGoodwill Ambassador by theUnited Nations Development Programme "to advocate for urgent action onclimate change andsustainable development goals."[87] In the context of his appointment, Olafur emphasized the need to stay positive: "I also think it's important not to lose sight of what is actually going quite well. There is reason for hope. I believe in hope as such and I'm generally a positive person. And when you think about it: it has never been better to be a young African girl, for instance."[88]
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