Talk
Your curious journey: A Conversation
In light of Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey at Museum MACAN, we invite the artist himself in a conversation with Indonesian artist Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi to talk about art, science, and nature.
29.11.2025
About the Speaker
The works of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Since 1997, his wide-ranging solo shows – featuring installations, paintings, sculptures, photography, and film – have appeared in major museums around the globe.
Eliasson is internationally-renowned for his exhibitions and public installations that challenge the way we perceive and co-create our environments. In 2003, he made 'The weather project', a glowing indoor sun shrouded in mist at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in London. In 2008, Eliasson constructed four expansive artificial waterfalls along the Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines for 'The New York City Waterfalls'. He has also explored art's potential to address climate change: for 'Ice Watch', he brought large blocks of free-floating glacial ice to the city centres of Copenhagen in 2014, Paris in 2015, and London in 2018. Passers-by could touch fragments of the Greenlandic glacial ice and witness its fragility as it disappeared before them.
On the occasion of the 2020 German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Eliasson created 'Earth Speaker' together with children around the world and support from the German Federal Foreign Office; the global artwork invites kids to speak up for the planet. In 2022, Eliasson opened 'Shadows travelling on the sea of the day', a cluster of large site-specific mirror pavilions that draw attention to the delicate habitat of the Qatari desert outside Doha.
In 2012, Eliasson founded the social business Little Sun and contributed to its growth until 2024. He and Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Spaces in 2014, an office for art and architecture. In 2019, Eliasson was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action. In 2023, he received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese imperial family for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion, and progress of the arts.
Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftspeople, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialised technicians.
Portrait of Olafur Eliasson
Photo by Louise Yeowart, 2024
About the Speaker
Syaiful Aulia Garibaldi obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Art, Printmaking Studio from the Faculty of Art and Design, Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung, Indonesia in 2010 and his Master's Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia in 2023. Syaiful, fondly known as Tepu, previously pursued education in agronomy before pursuing experimental fine arts, where he applies his scientific background to create a conceptual foundation for his art.
Tepu’s works in installation, painting, drawing, printmaking and video show a remarkably strong vision of art that collides with science in a graceful manner. His creation of an immersive environment was sparked by his interest in the networked and interconnected nature of ecologies, and the evocative power of microorganisms as symbols of death and decay, as well as life. Infusion between art and science transcends through Tepu’s work and gives way to a new gateway of knowledge, which is illuminated within his prints and installations.
