Studio Orta

Antarctica World Passport Office is a component of the long-term research project 'Antarctica', which explores topics relating to the environment, politics, autonomy, habitat, mobility and relationships among peoples. For Lucy + Jorge Orta, Antarctica represents Utopia: a continent whose extreme climate imposes mutual aid and solidarity. The immaculate ice landscape is a filter for the kaleidoscope that make up our nations and multi-ethnic identities, concentrating the colours, races and creeds into the sum of light, and a vision of Hope.
Passport offices are constructed with reclaimed wood and found objects including boats, water recipients, suitcases, toys, that tower and bulge over rudimentary structures synonymous with the shanty town and border crossings that artists have traversed in some of remotest corners of the planet. From the passport office are delivered editions of the Antarctica World Passport.

The first passport office was presented at the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan, Italy for the artists’ survey exhibition in 2008. Since, iterations have been created for museum exhibitions and United Nation forums on climate change and migration. The Paris-Shanghai passport office is a collection of wooden huts erected on stilts and interconnected by a raised platform to keeps passport citizens safe from potential flooding. It is estimated that sea levels will rise 0.5 to 1.4 meters over the next 100 years due to the effects of global warming. The work was commissioned by the Shanghai Biennale in China (2012) and reconfigured for the artists' solo exhibition at the Parc de la Villette in Paris (2014).

For further details about passport edition and registration process click here.