Some people will blame Aqua, and others Hello Kitty, but shock-art veteran Marco Evaristti offered little defence when he chose to dye an Icelandic geyser pink.
The Icelandic Police certainly didn’t think so. They fined the Chilean-born, Copenhagen-based artist 100,000 Icelandic kronur (5,000 Danish kroner) for meddling with the famous Strokkur geyser.
But in the end, he was allowed to leave the country without paying the penalty.
“Harmless” food colouring
Evaristti maintained that the food colouring he used to turn the hot spring pink was harmless.
“The beauty of nature keeps overwhelming me,” he wrote on his website.
“When I decorate nature – when I make landscape paintings in and on the landscape – I can’t think of a more beautiful motif and canvas in one.”
Disrespectful and arrogant
However, many do not agree with the artist’s sentiments and have accused him of arrogance and disrespecting Iceland.
“All artists choose their canvas, but when it comes to potentially harming natural environments, you have to know where to draw the line,” read one of the comments posted on Facebook.
Beautiful and thought-provoking
Evaristti’s actions are part of a long-term art project that includes dyeing a sheep and a camel pink, and some have described the pink geyser as “beautiful and thought-provoking”.
One supporter wrote: “I’m embarrassed by what people are saying to you. I wish people would act this way when some of the big companies and governments ruin our nature!”
Evaristti has previously draped the Alpine peak Mont Blanc in scarlet fabric, served meatballs cooked in his own fat, and invited people to turn on blenders containing live goldfish to test their sense of right and wrong.
