Canary Wharf Winter Lights returns for the fifth time with a dose of light much needed in the post-holiday season. This year’s edition features 21 installations by some of the most imaginative and exciting international artists working with light art today. The installations are scattered through the Canary Wharf estate inviting us to explore the area, despite the cold. With many of the installations being interactive and everyone having fun it brings back the holiday spirit.
Lights to look at and immerse yourself
Some of the artists decided to forgo the interactivity instead they immerse us with light or impress with their scale. The works remind us how powerful light can be despite all its simplicity. We take light for granted, but when used with skill it can create extraordinary experiences and move the immovable.
Lights to interact with
Other artists want to draw us in as active participants, creating the artworks through our presence and actions. We’re invited to touch for the lights to change colour, our heartbeat is used to operate the light on a bench, we can play a game of light hopscotch, take an angel selfie, or rotate the gigantic prisms to make the world colourfully spin around us.
Lights for the environment
Yet another group of works focuses on environmental issues, on how we continue to produce huge amounts of garbage, how our actions lead to the extinction of multiple species. Those beautiful, often very intricate works hold us accountable for our actions or lack of them. They remind us what happens when we don’t recycle but also show us that recycling can be beautiful. They show us how much we are losing every day that we continue to impact the environment in ways never seen before. You will see the floating islands made of plastic bottles, entire intricate cities created from recycled toys, a light equivalent of the neural network created from recycled materials and also a ghost whale and the last parade of endangered species.
There are many more installations, each of them will have you grabbing your phone to take some pictures.
Tuesday 15th January – Saturday 26th January
