The commission is a response to the Serpentine’s 50th anniversary Back to Earth programme inviting leading artists, musicians, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to propose artworks and projects that are also a call to action in response to the climate emergency.

Olafur Eliasson has created a series of nine images of the Earth, each of which has been abstracted by turning the planet on a different axis. Each image also denotes a particular spot on Earth with a “dot”. If a viewer stares at the dot for about ten seconds and then trains their focus onto a blank surface, an afterimage appears in the complementary colours of Eliasson’s visual - the viewer literally projects a
new world view.

The work explores how maps, space and the earth itself are all to a certain extent construction, which we all have the power to see from other perspectives, whether individually or collectively.

Olafur Eliasson said: “Today,'the world as we know it' is a phrase of the past. The current health crisis has brought our societies close to a halt, affecting our economies, our freedoms and even our social ties. We must take the time to empathise with all those struck by the crisis and also seize this opportunity to imagine together the earth that we want to inhabit in the future - in all its wonders and beauty, in the face of all the challenges ahead of us. Earth perspectives envisions the earth we want to live on together by welcoming multiple perspectives — not only human perspectives but also those of plants, animals, and nature. A glacier’s perspective deviates from that of a human. The same goes for a river. On Earth Day, I want to advocate — as on any other day — that we recognise these various perspectives and, together, celebrate their coexistence."

Olafur Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. Eliasson strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. Eliasson’s diverse works – in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations – have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy-making and issueas of sustainability and climate change.

Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) grew up in Iceland and Denmark. In 1995 he founded Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, which today includes craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, programmers, art historians and specialized technicians. Since the mid-1990s Eliasson has realised numerous major exhibitions and projects around the world. In 2003 The weather project, installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, was seen by more than two million people. Eliasson’s projects in public space include Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, designed with Kjetil Thorsen for London’s Kensington Gardens; The New York City Waterfalls, 2008; and Ice Watch, for which Eliasson and geologist Minik Rosing transported massive blocks of glacial ice from Greenland to Copenhagen (2014), Paris (2015) and London (2018) to raise awareness of climate change. In 2012 Eliasson founded the social business Little Sun, and in 2014 he and architect Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for art and architecture.
He lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin.