艾未未不仅是当代最具影响力的艺术家之一，也是一位直面现实、用影像发声的纪录片导演。他的纪录片作品常常聚焦于人权、社会不公与全球性危机，镜头冷静、内容犀利，却始终带有强烈的人文关怀。从记录中国汶川地震中失踪儿童的《老妈蹄花》，到反映全球难民处境的《人流》（Human Flow），艾未未将个人视角与全球议题相结合，以艺术家的敏锐与公民的责任感，搭建起一座跨文化对话的桥梁。他的影片不仅呈现事实，更追问背后的制度与人性，在视觉冲击与情感震撼中，引发深层思考。艾未未用镜头继续他的创作与抗议，使纪录片成为他最具穿透力的表达方式之一，也是他理念的延伸——艺术应直面现实，不做逃避的美化。
Usually when a museum is flooded with water, something has gone seriously wrong. But at the Fondation Beyeler just outside the Swiss city of Basel, the flooding of the museum is all part of the show: a new site-specific installation called Life by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.
The artist has removed one side of the Renzo Piano-designed building (with the architect’s blessing) and let the feature pond—usually separated from the climate-controlled interior by a large glass wall—into the museum. Visitors can navigate the waters, which are up to 80cm deep, using a series of walkways that run in and out of the building. At night, the interior is lit up with blue light.
Eliasson has also dyed the water a fluorescent green and filled it with pond plants, including water lilies and shellflowers selected by the landscape architect Günther Vogt. The water has been coloured using uranine, an organic dye that is commonly used to observe water currents, and which Eliasson has used previously for his Green River (1998) work where he dyed rivers in cities such as Stockholm, Tokyo and Los Angeles.
In an accompanying artist statement, Eliasson writes: “Together with the museum, I am giving up control over the artwork, so to speak, handing it over to human and non-human visitors, to plants, microorganisms, the weather, the climate—many of these elements that museums usually work very hard to keep out.”
The southern side of the building will be open to the elements for the duration of the show, which ends in July. Eliasson writes that “even if no human visitors are in the space, other beings—insects, bats, or birds, for instance—can fly through or take up temporary abode within it.” This possibility is very much part of the work, with the artist adding that when he first spoke to the museum’s director Sam Keller about ideas for the show, he thought to himself: “Why don’t we invite everyone to the show? Let’s invite the planet—plants and various species”.
The show is open 24 hours a day. “Visitors can access the installation at any time. After 9.30pm they do not need a ticket,” says a spokeswoman. She adds that, in terms of non-human visitors, so far there have been “insects, spiders, ducks, a goose and cats.”