Studio Orta

The forty framed embroideries and the immersive audio recording relate verse-by-verse a conversation between the ancestral mother Earth, Gaia and her more rational counterpart, Progress. Reading the embroideries from left to right, ‘Gaia meets Progress’ follows Lucy + Jorge Orta on an expedition to the Amazon in 2009. They trek high in the Andes Mountain at 4,800 meters above sea level where the glacial sources of the Amazon River descend the grassland slopes to the elfin forest. Penetrating a blanket of cloud hanging over the treeline, they enter deep into the rain forest before arriving at the Madre de Dios, a tributary of the Amazon River “It all happens here – between cloud and air between water and vapour between a plant and its root between sunbeam and green Here – between my forest and the steam it makes of rain the world is that web strung Between.”

The wall poem is an invitation to mediate on the ever encroaching and conflicting relationship between technology and the natural world, as Progress states “Globally, something like a dozen hectares of forest are lost every minute – over six million annually.  Twice the size of Belgium.  Each year, between 18 and 50 thousand species may sink into history.  Each hour, approximately four extinctions – between 100 and 1000 times the natural rate. The fate of as many as a million species may hinge on habitat loss and climate change.” Throughout the poem Gaia asks us to reflect on the consequences of our actions, “Tug at any one thing. The rest will move.”

The poem was written by eco-poet Mario Petrucci.