Studio Orta

Jorge Orta and the Studio-Orta team embark aboard a Hercules KC130 flight on their first expedition to the Polar region. Working closely with scientists stationed at the Marambio scientific base on the Antarctic Peninsular, they will scour the natural reserve in helicopters to select the ideal location for the symbolic encampment ‘Antarctic Village’. This ambitious artwork will be situated in various locations on the icecaps, forming an ephemeral exhibition reflecting upon a symbolic land that welcomes all, a ‘Community of Mankind’. Orta have been working on the project since the early 1990's and have created over 50 unique sculptures in the form of mobile habitats, mini-dome architectures. The aluminium membranes of the domes are encrusted with hundreds of flags, clothes and gloves, symbolising the multiplicity and diversity of people. The domes have been applied with hand silk-screen printed graphic inscriptions from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The creation of the ‘Antarctic Village’, the film and the expedition logbook to be published on their return, are a bid by the artists to amend Article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include a human beings inherent right to freedom of movement – Article 13.3. ‘Antarctic Village’ symbolizes a place that welcomes all and reflects on the millions of people exiled from their native lands by ecological disasters, economic ruin, war and political intimidation. Professor Lucy Orta, speaking from the University of the Arts: “We wanted to communicate the fact that Antarctica is first and foremost the most important World natural reserve and that the Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959 established freedom of scientific investigation, environmental protection, and also banned all military activity on this sixth continent. This was the first Arms Control agreement established during the Cold War. Antarctica is our new Utopia, the ideal metaphor for our idea that people should have a right to move freely and circulate beyond state borders to a new lands, in peace and towards a new Hope. 'Antarctic Village' encapsualtes the conceptual motto of the 1st End of the World Biennale as an art without frontiers joining the North and South Poles: “Pondering, at the end of the world that an other world is possible”."