I did not have much experience with installation art before encountering Olafur Eliasson’s, “In Real Life,” at the Tate Modern Art Museum in London. It was in the summer of 2019 during the sleepy hours of the afternoon. I was participating in a summer abroad with my college. We had one full day left in London and so I pounded mile after mile to see as many art museums as possible.
I was 21 and at a cross road in my life. Here I was about to enter my senior year by finishing a degree in English. I planned on attending graduate school for a masters in teaching following graduation. I felt unsteady in my decision, as if I were playing a board game for the first time and throwing out a random move because I wasn’t quite sure how the rules worked yet.
At the time, I did not know how impactful Eliasson’s installation would be to me in the coming years. The installation played on people’s senses, guiding the individual from one large wall of color-drained moss and quirky encounters with mirrors. One room, painted completely black, had a stark spotlight and a soft mist drifting down through the center of the room. I stood back and observed how adults became children again as they encountered the bizarre set up. The light refracted a rainbow and I watched as each person’s face lighted up with a smile as they felt the mist kiss their faces.
It was different from other art I had encountered - the kind of art you look at but don’t touch. But Eliasson’s exhibit wanted you to touch, feel, and enter into the miracle of existence. I walked into the center and gingerly lifted my hands to feel the mist. I think the room was purposely made bare, as a way to strip away all other sensations except the bright spotlight and the gentle water droplets.
It made me think of when I was young, wearing pink rainboots stomping around the backyard, purposely making the puddles splash because I enjoyed the sensation of the water. And there again, the exhibit reminded me of the sheer joy and wonder of simple things like water speckling your skin. Perhaps it was sort of baptism into what art became to me. It can be simple; it can be as simple as rediscovering the wonder of little things like the rainbows caught in sprinklers. Art can be simple; it can be as simple as rediscovering the wonder of being alive and sharing that with others.
Elliasson’s work focuses on climate change, with this exhibit being no exception. Imaginably Eliasson wanted to reawaken our senses to show us the desperate call we have to foster our planet. The installation was oddly communal. It included other people’s experiences as part of my experience of the exhibit. I participated with strangers as we all took in odd contraptions like a tunnel of spiraling mirrors and amber colored water slushing back and forth on the ground. Maybe he wanted to show us to work together as we are all experiencing life together on this planet.
The grace of art however, is that its meaning expands beyond the artist’s original intentions. Our art can be smarter than us, reaching into the depths of a person in ways that we don’t even have clever enough questions to ask. Eliasson’s installations founded the way I later interacted with the process of art making.
The last room actually wasn’t a room but a corridor filled with fog and colors. Eliasson titled it, “Your Blind Passenger.” When I entered, I expected the air to feel or taste different, but it seemed normal. I heard no noises. Just silence. The tunnel shifted colors as I walked. It moved to a mellow orange, cad yellow and eventually to a bright white - the kind of white someone expects after entering the afterlife.
I could only see a few steps ahead of me. Disillution overcame me, I panicked, but very carfully inching my way forward. I turned around and saw absolutely nothing. But in front of me I saw outlines of the people who have gone before me. Dumbfounded, I felt surrounded by color and wonder. Eliasson’s exhibit is the only work of art that I’ve encountered that so cearly replicates the experience of what it is like to live. We live only by a few steps at a time. We are blind to the future, passengers bound to time.
I walked slowly through the fog, cautiously taking one step at a time, sometimes holding my hands out from my face to prevent running into something. It was prophetic of both the stage of life I was in and the decision I was about to make. To pursue a craft I loved and knew nothing about? It’s a lot like walking through a colored fog. What about the other blind passengers around me? I think of my fellow artists who are also stumbling through life trying to piece together what little we know of our calling.
My least favorite, yet unfortunatly true statement is, “trust the process.” How can I trust a journey that feels as mysterious and illusive as a shimmering mist? Since interacting at Eliasson’s art show, it reminds me to pay attention to the strangers along the journey. It’s the people that give our art, our lives, meaning.