Greta Thunberg Went Inside an Art Bubble Filled With Pollution Yesterday to Raise Awareness About Climate Change

“The thing about air pollution is that most of it is invisible,”
British artist Michael Pinsky told artnet
News. In an effort to effectively illustrate its dangers, he’s
joined world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Action Summit to
present his interactive sculptural installation Pollution Pods, a set of six
enclosed domes that replicate air quality at five sites around the
world.

This weekend, the project had a very high-profile visitor:
16-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, whose
searing speech at the
UN on Monday was heard around the world. “We were happy that she
came around because things have gotten quite crazy for Greta,”
Pinksy said. He wasn’t sure what Thunberg thought of the work, but
“she certainly responded to each atmosphere with a certain amount
of horror.”

From the fresh air of rural Sweden to the toxic fumes of heavily
populated cities in China and India, the piece is meant to be a
wake-up call about the deteriorating state of our
planet. Pinksy is taking part in the summit through the
invitation of the World Health Organization, having previously
shown his interactive Pollution Pods last
September at their first conference on air pollution.

Thunberg, who traveled from Europe for the summit on a
zero-emission yacht, visited the pods ahead of an emotional speech
to world leaders. “People are suffering,” she said, breaking into
tears. “People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are
at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is
money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare
you.”

Pinksy is proud to have brought his work to the UN, noting that
way back in 1972, the first UN Conference on the Human Environment
declined to show Gustav Metzger’s Project Stockholm,
an artwork in which the
exhaust fumes from 120 running cars are directed into an enclosed
tent.

“It’s taken almost 50 years to be able to do a piece like this
at the UN!” Pinksy said. (Metzger finally realized his work at the
Sharjah Biennial in
2007.)

Pinksy hopes that by focussing on air pollution, an easily
grasped concept that people encounter in their everyday lives, he
can help push politicians to make legislative changes that will aid
in the battle against climate change. “I’ve done several pieces
about climate change over the last decade, but it was really hard
to get people to engage with its epic nature,” he explained.

“In the 1950s, London had really really terrible air pollution
because people were still burning coal to heat their houses,”
Pinksy said. After an estimated 4,000 people died during the Great
Smog of 1952, the government passed the Clean Air Act 1956, and
conditions improved dramatically.

“Legislation can change these things almost instantaneously,”
the artist insisted—fast enough to produce positive results for
politicians only in office for a few years and therefore focused on
short-term gains. “Today in China, the combination of industrial
pollution and domestic heating from wood and coal produces a very
similar smog to the one they had in London.”

Among the five sites featured, Pollution
Pods simulates the fresh air of Tautra, Norway, because that was the first country where the
work debuted, as well as the atmosphere of London, the artist’s
hometown. Pinksy also chose Beijing because China is notorious for
poor air quality, and New Dehli because it actually has the worst
air pollution in the world. The final city is São Paolo, where air quality is greatly
affected by burning ethanol fuel, which has a unique, vinegary,
almost fruity smell. 

The piece demonstrates the deleterious physical effects of air
pollution, but without actually being bad for your health—an early
version of the project saw the artist running a diesel engine to
generate real fumes, but Pinksy has since teamed up with
International Flavors and Fragrances to develop convincing replicas
instead. “They got a perfumer who lives in each of the
countries to make up the scent of each place,” he said.

As the conference heads into its final day, Pinksy has been in
touch with several representatives for heads of state who are
interested in visiting the pods—but none have done so yet. “They
are worried about sweating and smelling of pollution during the
conference,” he explained.

The Pollution Pods are completely safe.
Still, “it’s still a pretty visceral experience,” Pinksy admitted.
“People don’t feel that well when they come out of it; they’re
coughing and sweating.”

See more photos of the work installed at the UN below.

The post Greta Thunberg Went Inside an Art Bubble Filled
With Pollution Yesterday to Raise Awareness About Climate
Change appeared first on artnet News.