A Chilean artist has been jailed after dyeing a famous hot spring in Iceland pink with food colouring. Marco Evaristti, the South American artist who is based in Copenhagen, poured red fruit dye into the Strokkur Geysir, found around 70 miles to the north east of Reykjavik, at dawn. When they boiled, vibrant pink steam blew up from the ground as a result. Professing that ‘nature belongs to no one’, he did not seek permission from local authorities before the stunt. He has since been jailed for two weeks after landowners lambasted his efforts as ‘vandalism‘.
“This is not art,” Garðar Eiríksson, a spokesman for the landowners of the Geysir area told local news outlet mbl.is. “I am deeply sorry that a visitor to out country comes up with such an idea. I have very few words to describe my disgust at these actions.” Evaristti defended his artwork, describing himself as a ‘landscape painter‘:
“I do what I do because I’m a painter, a landscape painter who doesn’t use a canvas, I paint directly on nature.”
“I do not ask for permission because nature belongs to no one. I believe in freedom of speech and I believe nature doesn’t belong to certain people, but to everyone. I love mother nature. If I love a womn I give her a diamond ring. That’s why I decorate nature, because I love it.”
The artist has carried out the same stunt four times across the world including at a frozen waterfall in Norway last year. Boasting of the ‘installation’ on his website, he wrote:
“The 5th Pink State has seen the light of day. This morning the utopian state of Pink State claimed as it´s new territory the magnificent Strokkur Geysir in Iceland.”
(story courtesy of DailyMail)
