Studio Orta

Artists Lucy and Jorge Orta relish their roles as creative agents for social awareness andchange. Since founding Studio Orta in 1993, the Paris-based husband-and-wife team hasproduced an extensive body of work that addresses universal concerns of community, shelter,migration, and sustainable development.
Beyond merely tackling these issues artistically, theirwork suggests solutions by modeling fresh approaches to social dilemmas. From reclaimingdiscarded food for town-wide dinner celebrations to staging an international exhibition inAntarctica, their often-playful projects incorporate elements of fashion, art, and architecture,which they combine with performances, multimedia events, and public debates.

Lucy+Jorge Orta: Food Water Life features hundreds of photographs of recent works and includes texts bycurators Zoë Ryan, Ellen Lupton, Judith Hoos Fox, and Ginger Gregg Duggan and an interviewby critic Hou Hanru that provides insights into the artists’ processes and motivations. ISBN 978-1-56898-991-4

For their most recent body of work Amazonia, Lucy + Jorge Orta were deeply inspired by their expedition to the Peruvian Amazon during the summer of 2009. The sculpture and photography on display at Motive Gallery are an edited version of the exhibition Amazonia, which was commissioned by the Natural History Museum London as part of the International Year of Biodiversity 2010.

Recording through photography, video and sound the artists found this beautiful oasis of diversity, in a state of crisis. The rainforest proved to become an emotional and conceptual starting point to restore our focus to the world around us, both its beauty and its imperiled state. Amazonia is a state of mind through which the artists strive to revive our deep enjoyment of nature as such and to convey its value to our daily lives and to our survival.

The Espace culturel Louis Vuitton is offering a new variation on the theme of travel and choosing to reveal the Somewhere Else of eighteen “expeditionist” artists.

The nature of the expedition to which these artists devote themselves may vary widely. In this movement, in this encounter with new environments and cultures — sometimes distant, sometimes near, but always “other” — the artist finds the opportunity for a singular creation that is primarily characterised by its offset nature.

Lucy + Jorge Orta present a selection of artworks: Drop Parachute, Dome Dwellings and drawings from the series Antarctica, resulting from their incredible journey to the continent, where they installed the ephemeral artwork Antarctic Village - No Borders. The in-situ installation of dwellings took place during the Austral summer 2007 and was aided by the team of scientists stationed at the Marambio Antarctic Base situated on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Antarctic Village and the many artworks resulting from their artistic research draw attention to plight of those struggling to transverse borders and to gain the freedom of movement necessary to escape political and social conflict.

Aware: Art Fashion Identity co-curated by Lucy Orta with the independent curator Gabi Scardi examines how artists and designers use clothing as a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity.

The exhibition contains work by 30 emerging as well as established international contemporary practitioners including Marina Abramović, Acconci Studio, Azra Akšamija, Maja Bajevic, Handan Börüteçene, Hussein Chalayan, Alicia Framis, Meschac Gaba, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Andreas Gursky, Mella Jaarsma, Kimsooja, Claudia Losi, Susie MacMurray, Marcello Maloberti, La Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Yoko Ono, Maria Papadimitriou, Grayson Perry, Dai Rees, Katerina šedá, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Helen Storey, Rosemarie Trockel, Sharif Waked, Gillian Wearing RA, Yohji Yamamoto and Andrea Zittel.

New work by Yinka Shonibare and Hussein Chalayan, commissioned especially for Aware by London College of Fashion and the Royal Academy of Arts, is on display. Hussein Chalayan presents a new dress inspired by the 300 year old Japanese tradition of Bunraku puppet theatre while Yinka Shonibare has worked with bespoke tailor Chris Stevens to create 19th-century children’s dress assembled to form a impressive wall mural.

Aware is divided into four sections. Storytelling acknowledges the role of clothing in the representation of personal and cultural history. Grayson Perry’s Artist’s Robe, 2004, an elaborate, appliquéd coat made of a patchwork of luxurious fabrics, comments on the figure and status of the artist in the world today.

Building covers the concept of clothing being used as a form of protection and the notion of carrying one’s own shelter, referencing the nomadic, portable nature of modern life. On display is Shelter Me 1, 2005 by Mella Jaarsma who in her work parallels garment and architectural constructions. Jaarsma defines shelter as the minimal construction needed for protection, not yet the shape of a house, but directly related to the proportions of the human body.

Belonging and Confronting examines ideas of nationality as well as displacement and political and social confrontation, recognizing the tensions associated with the assimilation of new cultures and traditions. In Palestinian artist Sharif Waked’s video installation, Chic Point, 2003, the contradictory interpretations of revealing flesh as a fashion prerogative or as a humiliation juxtapose two worlds, one of high fashion and the other of semi-imprisonment.

The importance of Performance in the presentation of fashion and clothing, and in highlighting the roles that we play in our daily life, is explored in the final section. It features film footage of Yoko Ono’s performance of Cut Piece at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York in 1965, for which the artist invited the public to cut strips from her clothing. While the scraps of fabric fall to the floor, the unveiling of the female body suggests the total destruction of the barriers imposed by convention.

A full colour publication by Damiani accompanies the exhibition.http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-contemporary-season-2010/exhibition/

The exhibition, which coincides with the launch of the beautifully illustrated monograph publication Light Works by Black Dog Publishing, traces the emergence of Jorge Orta’s practice in Argentina from 1972 to 1983.

On view will be a selection of previously un-exhibited work from the Orta’s extensive archive including early video performance, tactile poetry, mail art, graphic scores and as well as handmade editions designed to communicate beyond the very limited sphere of contemporary art practice during the military regime. A unique opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the commitment and ethical dimension of the artists work over the last thirty years.

Black Dog Space is an independent exhibition space housed at 10a Acton street, London WC1X 9NG, presenting a programme of exhibitions organised in conjunction with international artists who have been published in-house.

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s current exhibition Amazonia is based on the expedition the artists made to the Peruvian rainforest in July 2009. Commissioned by the Natural History Museum contemporary art program as part of the International Year of Biodiversity, the exhibition opening coincides with the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, October 2010.

The new works on exhibition include: Collection: Aepyornis, Gallimimus, Allosaurus, Pelaeomastodon intricate porcelain casts of dinosaur fossils from the museum’s palaeontology department and Bones three larger than life iridescent aluminum bone sculptures. Madre de Dios - Fluvial Intervention Unit a ‘Noah’s Arc’ pirogue crammed with hundreds of tiny animals reflected into infinity. Amazonia a memorising diptych video-audio projection which covers the walls of the Jerwood Gallery, and Perpetual Amazonia S12 48 21.6 W71 24 17.6 a series of stunning large format photographs referencing the diversity of flora around the world, marked with the UTM coordinates of a hectare of land in the Amazon that the artists are hoping to save into perpetuity.

During their expedition Lucy + Jorge Orta assisted eco-scientists with their species collection, sketching, photographing and filming the flora and fauna they encountered along their journey. Reflecting on some of the ecosystems they encountered, they found the rainforest to be a beautiful oasis of diversity, in a state of crisis. As with many of their projects, the artists hope that their artworks will conceptually stake out the terrain of our relationship to nature and its value to us - restoring our focus to the world around us, both its beauty and its imperilled state.

The project wijheizij in partnership with the Belgian NGO Vredeseilanden sets up collaborations between farmers and artists to stress the important role that change, community and culture play in society. Throughout the summer these collaborations can be seen in different venues across Flanders with artists such as Lucy + Jorge Orta, Nathalie Hunter, Johan Creten, Koen Vanmechelen and Berlinde De Bruyckere. Within this context Lucy + Jorge Orta present in their collaboration with dairy farmers Luc and Krista Callemeyn, which portray their fascination for milk containers. Over the years the artists have observed how people all over the world deal with milk as an in principal essential daily nourishment. The new art works pay tribute to a seemingly insignificant but in fact rather essential utensil. Through this the artists symbolically also express what is at stake within the project wijheizij.

The exhibition Eclaircies brings together the most prominent French artists whose work sensitively highlights ways in which we can re-imagine our world, its environmental sustainability faced with the threat of climate change and offer different approaches of participation and engagement.

"A la manière des philosophes éclairant les gouvernements des lumières, les artistes aujourd’hui cherchent à apporter un éclairage sensible pour repenser notre monde."

Lucy + Jorge Orta present Urban Life Guard, first shown in 2005 at the Curve gallery, Barbican (2005. During the opening night, contemporary dance students from CNDC will imporvise a performance to create unexpected transformations.

In the frame of the 7th edition of the International Festival of Visual Arts l'Eté des Arts en Auxois-Morvan, the artists present a fragment of Antarctic Village – No Borders, first installed on the Antarctic peninsular in 2007 and which toured to the Hangar Biccoca in Milan and Le Galleria Continua / Le Moulin in 2008.

The series Antartica embodies the hope for a neutral peaceful land, free of conflict. The Dome Dwellings and Drop Parcahutes embelished with all nation flags are a physical embodiment of a new ‘Global Village’, referring to the right to freedom of movement enshrined within the UN Declaration for Human Rights. For the opening, the artists distributed the Antarctica World Passport to the inhabitants of Montbard adding to the online database: http://antarcticaworldpassport.mit.edu/citizens/news

For the opening of the new art museum MAXXI in Rome designed by Zaha Hadid, 90 works from the museum's permanent collection will be exhibited along a single route winding inside and outside the museum in an open dialogue with the site-specific installations of ten international architectural studios.
Three works from the series Antarctic Village - No Borders by Lucy + Jorge Orta have been selected for this inaugural display and the visitor will be guided through an exploration of the complex concept of space understood in both the environmental senses, as a place of imagination and as a political and social dimension.

In the frame of the new 'Fashion, Textiles and the Environment' programme, CCANW presents a solo exhibition by Lucy Orta. Her work is often a critical response to sensitive areas of society, reflecting on themes such as community and social inclusion, dwellings and mobility, recycling and sustainable development.

Lucy often uses facilitated workshop processes, harnessing fashion’s power to create identity and symbolic content for ‘social sculpture’ worn in public spaces and used as interventions commenting directly on social and global issues. She draws inspiration from a variety of disciplines including fashion, architecture, design philosophy, social activism and traditional art practice. The exhibition brings together her sculptures, videos, objects and drawings.

In celebration of the Adelaide Festival’s 50th anniversary, the Visual Arts Program will inaugurate the Adelaide International 2010 with the exhibition: Apart, we are together, curated by Victoria Lynn.

The exhibition includes the work of eleven international artists and is supported by University of South Australia. Adelaide International 2010: Apart, we are together will consolidate the Adelaide Festival’s long history of engagement with contemporary art from around the world by addressing the theme of the heart. “The heart can take us in many directions, memory, secrets, longing, and emotional thresholds. It is with the heart that we forge aesthetics of courage and sustenance. What does it take to survive, to keep the heart going? What forms of resistance and resilience are at work”, says curator Victoria Lynn.

Lucy + Jorge Ortas' solo exhibition at the JamFactory will include sculptures and wall works from the series 70 x 7 The Meal and Nexus Architecture. The festival have commissioned the artists to create 10 enamelled aluminium sculptures, based on their longstanding work The Gift (Life Nexus) and the artists will create a new body of work Nexus Harnesses which includes photography work from the graduate students at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.

A New Stance for Tomorrow: Part 3 brings together artists’ films, videos and documentation that examine various notions of settlement and community. Spanning proposals from the 1970s to the present, the artists, designers and filmmakers included in this exhibition use various strategies to dissolve the boundaries between art, architecture and design while developing visions and explorations into positive propositions for the future.
As a part of the Antarctica project, Lucy + Jorge Orta present the video of their journey to the Antarctic in 2007 and the installation of their symbolic village - fifty Dome Dwellings created as a possibility of a free and all inclusive community.

Recent debates have centred less on the possibility and more on the certainty and speed with which climate change will take place. As the debate has developed, so too has our approach to the future of our planet and citizens. Co-curated by Kathleen Soriano, Director of Exhibitions at the Royal Academy, David Buckland, Director of Cape Farewell and Edith Devaney, Royal Academy, this exhibition will reflect the impact of the climate change debate on the practice of a broad range of contemporary artists across a wide variety of media. Earth will interconnect ‘issue’ and ‘art’, and will present works that are beautiful, powerful and thought-provoking.

Lucy + Jorge Orta present Antarctic Village – No Borders, first installed in Antarctica in 2007 as a symbol of the plight of those struggling to cross borders and to gain the freedom of movement necessary to escape political and social conflict. For the artists, Antartica embodies the hope for a neutral peaceful land, free of conflict. Hand-stitched by a traditional tent-maker with sections of flags from countries around the world, this physical embodiment of the new ‘Global Village’ refers to the right to freedom of movement enshrined within the UN Declaration for Human Rights.

70 x 7 The Meal, act XXXl is a collaboration between Lucy + Jorge Orta and local artists Anne-Marie Culhane and Jo Salter.

The 31st act of the dining project is a celebration of wild and local food: growing it, eating it and sharing it and provides the opportunity for an invited audience to enjoy a special meal in friendly discussion around the theme of food and sustainability. Regional foods from the South-West area of England have been harvested and prepared by chefs from Fat Hen, a small rural family enterprise set up by forager and professional ecologist Caroline Davey.

Jamie Mclaren-Smith, environmental business manager from Groundwork South West, will be carrying out a carbon footprint calculation, taking in the total distances travelled by guests and food alike and the electricity and gas used on the night, therefore enabling him to work out a representative figure of the event’s approximate carbon footprint, comparing it to more commercial practices.

The event is organised by Groundwork South West in collaboration with Plymouth Arts Centre and Plymouth College of Art where a solo exhibition of Lucy Orta's work is open until the 8th November 2009.

The Antarctic Village Metisse Flag signals the entrance to the latest exhibition Esthétiques des Poles - Le Testament des Glaces at the FRAC Loraine in Metz. An opportunity to view more fragments of Lucy + Jorge Ortas' Antarctica works, originally installed across the penisular in 2007.
Engaging works from artists Dove Allouche, Evariste Richer, Darren Almond, Dominique Auerbacher, Jean-Jacques Dumont, Joachim Koester, Julien Loustau, Bertrand Lozay, David Renaud, Guido van der Werve, Marijke van Warmerdam explore the aesthetics of the poles where romanticism and ecological considerations dominate and oscillate between two alternatives: a sense of profound confusion before the changing world and a yearning for adventurous exoticism. Whether they take on the form of a personal diary, a travelogue, or a documentary; whether they represent a physical, symbolical or scientific exploration, the artworks comprise a network of images, sounds, and words which combine initiatory journeys and social utopias, and in which being becomes once again human. http://www.fraclorraine.org

Plymouth Arts Centre and Plymouth College of Art are collaborating on an exhibition and series of events with the international artist Lucy Orta. Focusing on the elements of craft and design, the gallery spaces will be dedicated to experiencing this seminal artist’s work.Lucy Orta’s work examines the social bonds within communities and the relationships between individuals and their environments. The exhibition brings together sculptures, videos, objects, drawings and photographs created by Orta over the last ten years for a diverse range of collaborative projects, performances, installations and social interventions held in cities around the world. 



Art and fashion’s influence on the definition of society, identity and culture as well as the relationship between fashion design, cultural engagement and performative action constitute the thematic core of the exhibition. A Way Beyond Fashionshowcases designers who explore questions of individuality as well as artists who work with identity, socio-cultural and interventionist issues and whose works analyze the dynamics of a globalized fashion world. Fashion as the interface between the individual and society, between art, architecture, technology and design. Fashion acts as a social skin through which the natural confines and limits of the body can be surpassed. Transience and variety, the confrontation with the individuality and also the anonymity of a media-driven fashion industry gives artists and designers an opportunity to articulate innovative concepts. In contrast to the everyday relationship the consumer has with fashion, A Way Beyond Fashiondeals with the questions of our society which are rooted in complex issues of identity as well as ecological and technical developments.

AntArctica is Haugar’s contribution to Kulturminnevernåret (Safeguard of Cultural Heritage Year), and focuses upon a number of Norwegian and international artists whose work relates to the serious effects of climate change. The work in the exhibition explores ideas of dystopia as well as the natural sciences - there is work that is clearly critical of today’s society, documentary, poetic and multi-facetted work.

The 2009 edition of the @rt Outsiders Festival —celebrating this year its tenth anniversary—focuses on extreme environments.These are environments that were, until recently, uninhabited by human beings and that contemporary science and technology turn into "inhabitable" places (Antarctica, underwater world, outer space, deserts); but also those that are becoming "uninhabitable" due to the impacts of our way of life (pollution, technological accidents, economical pressures and global warming).

"(Un)Inhabitable? – Art of Extreme Environments" presents works that explore the meaning of living in extreme environments, in the imaginary realm as well as in the physical one, in the political, social and environmental fields as well as in the poetic ones.

Antarctica World Passport signing: Wednesday, October 7th, from 5pm.