Studio Orta

In the late seventies, alongside artists Clemente Padín in Uruguay, Damaso Orgaz in Venezuela, Edgardo Vigo and Graciela Marx in Argentina, Jorge Orta joined a network strategy for communication and distribution of ideas through Mail Art that proliferated throughout Latin America. They believed in “an art from the base upward, without artists”, which embraced a critique of society, politics and the very conservative and commercial face of the art world.

Mail Art was one of the main modes of widespread distribution of visual arts in the 1970s and early 1980s, and was eagerly employed in Latin America. In the context of political repression, it served artists to create ubiquitous platforms to disseminate messages otherwise blocked by State controlled circuits such as the printed media. Jorge Orta often stamped his work with slogans, which were then subsequently distributed through a number of these alternative circuits. Each cast bronze plaque at the base of these twelve wooden stamps Selios, is a title of a manifesto.  Working in collaboration since the 1990’s, Lucy + Jorge Orta continue the founding principles of these early manifestos.