At the heart of Tomas Saraceno’s art is the questioning and reorientation of human beings and their experience of the earth, its atmosphere, environments, and non-human species. Saraceno’s practice connects art with life sciences and social sciences to create immersive projects that reimagine a world free from carbon, extractivism, capitalism, patriarchy and fossil fuels.

Saraceno’s participative installation at the Artist Airshow in Gunpowder Park London, 2007, titled Poetic Cosmos of the Breath brought his utopian vision of designing spaces such as cities that float in the air and change forms like clouds, to earth. This beautiful work involved creating a synesthetic experience using a giant dome made from iridescent foil weighted by sandbags that gradually inflated with increasing hot air as the sun rose. It invited people to interact with the natural rhythms of the sun, air, clouds, sky and a shifting rainbow of colours as the foil reflected and refracted light; to explore the boundaries of their perceptions with the natural elements of the earth and its atmosphere; to dream and imagine life lived in a cloud.