Studio Orta

For Georg Simmel, the innate pressures of the urban environment that Lucy so eloquently confronts in her work, lead ultimately to a loss of self. Due to the myriads of differentiated interests and inter-relationships contained within the modern city the individual becomes entwined within the mass of humanity. Lost within a surfeit of what he describes as a many membered organism. In contrast, Lucy’s umbilical structures create an organism of a different type ; a symbolic organism that proffers itself as a direct physical and visual intervention. Her constructions, with their many detachable appendages or Social Links unite different individuals into a self-sufficient entity that signals the power of a collective body over the isolation of a single soul. Through the setting up of Interventions, Orta’s Nexus Architecture therefore encourages not only the physical participation of individuals in the actual intervention “per se” but also their collective action in the very creation of the work itself.