Studio Orta

'Migrations and Climate' explores the dynamics of migration in relation to climate change through artistic, scientific and public perspectives. Lucy + Jorge Orta present a major installation of their long-term research project Antarctica, including Antarctic Village No Borders from the museum collection and Antarctica World Passport Office with a new edition of the passport printed for the occasion (Ed. 9).

Curators: Bruno Girveau, Élisabeth Jolys-Shimells and Gabriel Picot

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Lucy + Jorge Orta: Homo Mondialis

Through intricate embroidery and appliqué works, sculpture and immersive video installations, Lucy + Jorge Orta's survey exhibition for the 2025 British Textile Biennial crosses continents and oceans, from the polar ice cap to the jungle, from the desert to the forest.

The artists are modern day explorers and storytellers, working with environmental scientists across the globe in an attempt to comprehend the impact of man’s production and consumption on natural habitats through the centuries. The works on show represent a survey of Lucy’s textile works that capture her observations on man’s enduring relationship with the environment and the lessons we urgently need to learn from this precious place we currently inhabit in order to survive its increasingly extreme climates, of our own making.

'Homo Mondialis' invites you on a journey, to discover humanity’s ancestral knowledge and the ancient wisdom that learnt from nature, enabling people to survive in the most challenging conditions, using the earth’s resources without destroying them and living in harmony with the planet.

Curator: Laurie Peake

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Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 'Re-Constellations' examines how ancient interpretations of celestial bodies relate to the modern dynamics of globalisation and localisation.

Lucy + Jorge Orta present Archipelago, immense textile maps representing islands and countries of Southeast Asia. The linen canvases are embroidered with nautical lines and compass roses taken from early 17th-century Dutch and British maritime trade maps. The work speaks to the cultural and ecological impact of the transcontinental network of economic and political interests that governed relationships between Asia and Europe, formally the Silk Route. The islands are crafted with textiles originating from South East Asia–Java batik, Chinese jacquard, Japanese prints, Malay embroideries–assembled to simulate imaginary topographies and ornamented with beaded silk flowers. 'Archipelago' offers a poetic and silent plea against environmental degradation caused by overconsumption.

Curators: Shi Hui, Assadour Markarov, Jiang Jun, Huang Yan and Xu Jia

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Making reference to Paul Eluard's poem 'Les Yeux fertiles', the exhibition at Havas Paris headquarters welcomes visitors through a forest of gigantic and vibrant species. The monumental wall drawings by Lucy + Jorge Orta draw from their research investigating the natural environment and species loss, creating a poetic dialogue between contemporary urban architecture and threatened biodiversity.

Curator: The Caring Gallery

This major exhibition investigates how artists and activists from around the world understand the interrelations between living beings, humans, their creations, and the environments they inhabit. Among the featured works, Body Architecture by Lucy + Jorge Orta explores the macrocosm of community and modular collective dwellings by creating physical links between individuals and symbolising the many emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual ties that connect us.
 
Curators: Adriano Pedrosa, André Mesquita and Isabella Rjeille

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Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Jane Lombard Gallery, Lucy + Jorge Orta present recent their most paintings Fabulae Naturae, underscoring a longstanding commitment to evolving forms of representation to alert to the fragility of our natural world in the face of the human impact of global warming and deforestation.

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Lucy + Jorge’s latest public sculpture Il Nido is an elegant 4-metre bronze tree drawing together three forms of representation. The trunk, a tower of gnarled olive roots with their knots and scars registering wounds inflicted; Pollino’s endangered birds, bearing witness to the fragile ecological balance of the woodland; and the local stones as mineral anchors, symbolising the resilience of geological time.

‘Il Nido’ marks the artists’ third artwork for Pollino in collaboration with Associazione ArtePollino, and the support of the Municipality of Lauria.

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The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025 is dedicated to art’s capacity to forge dialogues and to afford us sensitivity towards societal concerns, such as ecology, survival and living together. Presented are works from Lucy + Jorge Orta’s ‘Lifeline’ series that refer to both physical and material survival and more symbolically to the spiritual needs of man, such as affection and solidarity – as gestures of comfort that can be extended out to those in need.

Curator: Farshid Moussavi

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The exhibition Potential Architecture condenses some of the key concepts on which Lucy + Jorge Orta have focused their research over the last three decades. In particular, the potential of new forms of dwelling and ways of living in relationship with our identity, the environment, frontiers, and cross border migration.

The body of works presented by SPARC, includes a series of large format drawings and collage, architectural models in light-steel and hand-blown glass and key work from the Antarctica project, a tent dwelling appliquéd with clothes, gloves and silkscreen printed world flags that addresses international human rights and the value of the natural environment to our daily lives and to our survival. Architecture has a key role in shaping the artists’ practice and concepts, through which it is possible to imagine the cohabitation of humans and non-humans today and for the future.

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Âmes vertes —Green Souls— is an exhibition curated by French historian Paul Ardenne at Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille from 8 February to 1 June 2025. This exhibition invites audiences to reflect on their relationship with the living world through artworks that strive for ecological moderation and shape new ecosophical models.

A highlight of the exhibition is Symphony for Absent Wildlife (2014-2020). This immersive installation features a life-size orchestra dressed in felt top and tails, wearing masks of creatures once abundant on the Albertan plains of Canada. Bison, moose, wapiti, wolves, grizzly bears, mountain goats, beavers, and eagles have been pushed to near extinction by exploitative human practices. The costumed orchestra, video, and soundscape create a fully immersive environment, evoking the loss of cultural heritage and endangered ecosystems.

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What happens when we not only accept the walls around us as a given, but consciously perceive, conquer, and shape them?

This question will be explored through the pioneering BODY ARCHITECTURE works by Lucy Orta, presented in the exhibition My Room More than 4 Walls at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Junge Kunsthalle from 1 February to 21 September 2025. Young audiences will be invited to interact with the arm, hood, or leg appendages of the sculpture, exploring ways in which dwelling spaces are constructed emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually.

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Meteoros refers to the ancient Greek word meaning “high in the air.” Clouds also evoke the cycles of water, exploring its scarcity and abundance, a theme we have been investigating through the long-term project OrtaWater since 2005. In this work, clouds carry life-size figures on an imaginary journey through the skies. METEOROS (2015) is presented in a new installation at The Hyundai Daegu in South Korea from 2 January to 31 May 2025. Visitors will experience the work up close, where mirror plinths create the impression of clouds floating in space, challenging ways in which sculpture engages with everyday life.

We are thrilled to share the trailer for the feature film SEED, directed by David Bickerstaff, set to premiere at film festivals soon.

Jorge Orta, who endured the brutal military regime that terrorized Argentina between 1974-1983, revisits his past in this poignant film. During this ‘Dirty War,’ suspected communists, artists, intellectuals, and writers were detained, tortured, and raped under a state-sponsored campaign of eradication. In response, Jorge created many performances and artworks that could not be revealed at the time.

Decades later, Jorge embarks on a journey from the spectacular deserts of Central America to the streets of Buenos Aires, recalling the corruption and performing acts of protest and resistance. Using non-actors and minimal dialogue, this film is a poetic exploration of one man’s journey through an epic landscape, reflecting on the loss of innocence, oppressive states, and human cruelty.

For the 60th October Salon, Lucy + Jorge Orta staged the 47th act of  70 x 7 The Meal. Under the framework of ‘Trace’ curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Dobrila Denegri, this inaugural commission for the biennale was devised as a collective proposition to create a dialogue between artists, the city's cultural scene and the structures that determine cultural policy at the local and state level.
 
200 guests convened in front of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade on Friday, October 18, around a table setting which aimed to answer questions devised in conversation with Serbian artists and cultural sector workers. Four thematic areas explored the conditions under which artists are working, the role of the artist in society today, the needs of the cultural organisations and how national policies effect cultural practices. To facilitate conversations, guests found provocations printed on the table runners and embroidered on napkins realized by collective NEpraktične žeNE forming a collective manifesto that further unfolded through interactions during the meal courtesy of chef Vladimir Zoplet. 

My centre everywhere, the special project for Moderne Art Fair as artistes invités, is inspired by the poem ‘Amazonia’ written by British eco-poet Mario Petrucci and based on video footage recorded by Lucy and Jorge in the Amazon rainforest. Commencing in the Andes where mountain glaciers are melting at a faster rate than ever recorded and descending to the Amazon river basin where mercury mining is devasting the river’s ecological balance, Petrucci reconstructs the artists’ expedition through the positionality of Gaia, and Man, a dichotomy between the ecologically-centred thinking and Progress.

The installation comprised of a range of different artworks from the artists’ Amazonia series, forming a interrelated microcosm of mediums and formats that reflect the imaginary and complexity of our natural world. We see trees, plants, flowers, insects, birds rendered in drawing, painting, crafted in textiles, embroidered, and sculpted. The artworks are a compilation of visual and sensory data collected and transcribed from regions of the world the artists have visited, indicative of the interwoven nature of biodiversity they observe first-hand. Further information in the catalogue.

My centre everywhere was made possible thanks to Hum media, with special thanks to Frederick Moraux and Flavie Durand-Ruel.

For the Jing’an International Sculpture Project 2024 curated by UCCA Lab, Lucy + Jorge Orta presented Genius Loci —a new commission in the Genius Loci series, representing the ‘spirit of the place’ traversing time, past, present, future, shaping cultural, social and ecological transitions.

For the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and under the artistic direction of COAL, Plaine commune presents Les Victoires, an artistic project including 6 monumental works along the redesigned banks of the Canal Saint-Denis.

In the series Genius Loci, Lucy + Jorge Orta have created “L’envol”, a life-size bronze sculpture of a child holding a bird in his hand. Placed on the footbridge overlooking the Canal Saint-Denis and the Olympic Stadium, this universal figure symbolises the link between generations, a dynamic and poetic image of renewal for a neighbourhood in the making, at the heart of urban and ecological transitions. It shows us the road ahead and the future with all the fervour of youth.

A project in collaboration with COAL and in partnership with the cities of Saint-Denis, Aubervilliers and Paris.

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, COAL, leading association for art and ecology, presents a major multidisciplinary exhibition curated by Lauranne Germond and Sara Dufour, showcasing nearly 50 artists representing the richness and variety of approaches of the ecological art scene.

For this special occasion, a group of ten "Procession banners 1918-2018" co-created with inmates of London's HMP Downview prison are presented for the first time in France. They commemorate the centenary of the suffragette movement, and more precisely the achievements of the British women who fought for women's right to vote at the dawn of the 20th century. The banners reveal liberating slogans in memory of the 1,000 women who were imprisoned in the same place for fighting for their rights, one hundred years earlier. Side by side, these banners form a clam or that echoes through the ages and reaches us today, imbued with eco-feminist fervor, it is also a call to action for climate rights. 

For the 8th Beaufort Triennial curated by Els Wuyts, Lucy + Jorge Orta have created Gazing Ball: Reflective Dialogues for the Beaufort Sculpture Park, which extends 67km along the Belgium coast.

The Gazing Ball is installed in the town of Middelkerke. Visitors are greeted by the contours of a small architecture – open and boundless –; it is an inviting artwork into which people can enter through four passage ways. In the nave of the gathering space, resembling a compass rose, is a large reflective sphere that crowns the artwork, capturing the constantly shifting play of light and shadow. As in previous Potential Architecture works by the artists, the reflections offer new perspectives on the landscape while humbly situating the viewers within their surroundings. Seated within, visitors are given a moment for contemplation, self-reflection, and to engage in conversation. It is art on a human scale.
 
‘Gazing Ball: Reflective Dialogues’ also pays homage to adjacent Radio Oostende station. Wireless telegraphy played a crucial role in ensuring safety along the Oostende-Dover route, serving as an essential connection between the shore and ships. The sculpture not only establishes a tangible connection between people, but also a symbolic connection between heaven and earth, past and present.

As part of the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale public program, Lucy + Jorge Orta staged a sohour meal for the local community, making this the 46th activation of their ongoing participatory project 70 x 7 The Meal. 

A long table installation for 300 guests overlooked Wadi Hanifah, a seasonal river and caravan route that historically led pilgrims along the valley to the market sustaining them with food and water along the way. The menu was prepared by Chef Hissa Alhuthaili (Suhail) based on local food traditions and interventions by local Saudi artists, botanists, heritage experts, farmers punctuated the evening. The table artworks created by Lucy + Jorge specifically for the occasion included a limited edition of Royal Limoges porcelain plates and hand embroidered table centrepieces that drew attention to the natural fertility of the Wadi Hanifah and the garden city of Riyadh, faced with the encroachment of the urban development and loss of traditional knowledge. Field research on the native local species in collaboration with botanists from NCVC, and on the symbolic meaning of traditional Sadu motifs (Atharna), came together in these table artworks through a lexicon of figurative and abstract geometric shapes to share a new language of resilience.

Special thanks to the National Centre for Vegetation Cover Development & Combating Desertification (NCVC); Dr Dlayel bint Mutlaq bin Shafi Al-Qahtani (Atharna); DBF co-curators Ute Meta Bauer, Wejdan Reda, Anca Rujoiu with curatorial assistants Amina Diab, Dian Arumningtyas, Alanood A. Al-Sudairi.