The multi-faceted glass form shimmers with intense light, each pane reflecting different saturated colours within the mirrored interior, creating a dense field of rainbow colours.

Firefly city 2025

Firefly city 2025 offers a space for quiet reflection and contemplation. A sphere is suspended at the centre of the room and turns slowly, its appearance changing as it moves. Inside, light is refracted and multiplied within a nest of geometric forms, each delineated in mirror and glass. While much of the light is held within an outer skin of purple-grey glass, light and colour shine through, playing upon our bodies and the walls of the room.

This flickering effect is particularly vivid in the spaces between the outer skin of the sphere and its supporting frame. The outer form is in fact an icosahedron, a Platonic solid made of 20 curved triangular faces. Inside, two further polyhedra rotate slowly around a central axis: a rhombic triacontahedron (30 faces) realised in semi-reflective glass; and at the core, a dodecahedron (12 faces) in dichroic glass.

Olafur Eliasson has worked with complex geometric forms such as these for many decades. He was initially inspired by the Icelandic architect and geometrician Einar Thorsteinn, whom he has since worked with on many projects. Eliasson and his Studio team still use working replicas of Thorsteinn’s models to problem-solve aspects of the design and production of sculptures, installations and buildings. These treasured original models are displayed in the studio nearby.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

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Firefly city, created in 2025, is a sculptural installation constructed from semi-reflective glass. Suspended above head height from the ceiling, this work takes the form of a glowing sphere one metre in diameter. The sculpture hangs in open space, emitting shifting patterns of light that scatter across the surrounding walls, floor and ceiling, extending the work beyond its physical form.

The outer shell of the sphere is constructed from grey-tinted, segmented glass, framed by a fine stainless-steel lattice. The sphere has 20 triangular faces that are slightly curved, giving the object a softened geometry.

Nested inside this outer sphere are two further circular structures. The middle layer is built from 30 diamond-shaped panels of semi-reflective glass. At the very centre rests a smaller structure made of dichroic glass, a material that reflects some wavelengths of light while allowing others to pass through, creating subtle shifts of colour.

Small LED lights are mounted at each vertex of the outer sphere. Their beams shine inward, striking the inner forms before bouncing outward again. As the internal structures rotate slowly on a central axis, the lights flicker rhythmically, scattering coloured reflections and shadows. The effect fills the room with a constantly shifting geometry of light, colour and movement. Firefly city captures a universe of potential within a single sphere, like a portable city of light.

– QAGOMA

$A close-up of a prismatic, spherical sculpture’s inner shell, showing overlapping triangular panes that refract vivid hues of green, blue, yellow, and red, framed by the ribs of a black metallic frame.$ A large, illuminated geometric sculpture with a faceted, iridescent core hangs in a darkened space, projecting kaleidoscopic patterns of coloured light onto the surrounding walls.

A large, illuminated geometric sculpture with a faceted, iridescent core hangs in a darkened space, projecting kaleidoscopic patterns of coloured light onto the surrounding walls.

A person stands in a darkened gallery facing a large, faceted spherical structure that glows with iridescent, multicoloured light, reflecting geometric patterns across the gallery walls.

Room: ‘Your presence’

Entering this gallery, it might seem we are again leaving Earth’s atmosphere and moving into space. Moving forward, we find ourselves approaching a vast ‘sun’, or perhaps it is another star.

Presence 2025 appears to move and shift with energy. Olafur Eliasson uses yellow monofrequency lights and layers of pattern to create a ‘moiré effect’ activated by our motion. Mirrors then expand the gallery beyond what seems possible, creating the impression of a complete sphere from only one-eighth of its full volume.

Evoking a circle of coloured moons, There are no bad parts 2025 contains a single glass sphere, but five more can be seen in the mirrors. Eliasson works with physics, optics, light; glass, paint and mirrors; he is also deeply interested in exploring how art might spark greater self-awareness. The artwork’s title draws upon psychotherapeutic ideas Eliasson has been exploring, inviting us to consider ourselves as a whole composed of multiple ‘parts.’ Are these parts fixed? Or, if heard and cared for, might their behaviour and roles change, just as the colours of the sphere change when we move?

In the gallery nearby, another radiant sphere is suspended, turning slowly to cast patterns of light and shadow on the walls. Firefly city 2025 offers a space for quiet reflection and contemplation: in this contained ‘city’, light is endlessly multiplied within nested geometries of mirror and glass.

The energy of our star, the sun, sustains our lives and our presence in this moment. Eliasson heightens our perception of what it means to move around – and beyond – this planet. He asks us to look within ourselves, as well as to perceive, recognise and welcome each other.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Other works from ‘Your presence’:

Experience this work on the Sense Trail