Studio Orta

On January 22, 2013 the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University opens its doors to Lucy + Jorge Orta’s seminal exhibition Food Water Life. The exhibition, which originated at Tufts University Gallery and which will tour the United States, explores how the artists' unique visual language tackles global issues affecting our lives. Three projects spanning close to two decades of collaborative work will be presented: Hortirecyling (1997-2005), OrtaWater (2005-2007) and Antarctica (1990-2009).

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s artwork communicates widely to audiences beyond the field of contemporary art, demonstrating the importance of art as a creative agent for awareness and change. During the next three years, the artists will stage on-location workshops, ephemeral interventions, residencies and master classes that explore the crucial themes of the contemporary world: the community, autonomy, dwelling, migration, sustainable development and recycling.

This exhibition will travel to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (January 25–May 25, 2014) and Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University, Greencastle (February 5–May 7, 2015) with other venues to be announced.

Pour l’exposition Spécimens, le Domaine de Chamarande invite onze artistes internationaux à présenter le fruit de leurs confrontations avec les pratiques naturalistes. À partir de spécimens imaginés ou prélevés sur le terrain, ils inventent un nouvel échantillonnage du monde. Ils créent leurs propres modalités de classement, protocoles d’observation et d’expérimentation qui calquent et déjouent les processus scientifiques pour décomposer notre représentation du monde naturel. 



Spécimens présente Perpetual Amazonia de Lucy + Jorge Orta, œuvres d'art inspirées par la participation des artistes à une expédition en Amazonie péruvienne en 2009 avec des scientifiques de l'Environmental Change Institute (ECI) à l'Université d'Oxford. Dans le cadre de la recherche scientifique Lucy + Jorge Orta ont délimité une parcelle d’un hectare de forêt tropicale correspondant aux coordonnées GPS S12 48 21.6 W71 24 17.6, au cœur de la Zone Culturelle de la réserve naturelle de Manú, un site classé patrimoine mondial de l'humanité par l'UNESCO et considéré comme la plus vaste zone protégée du Pérou. Plus de 15.000 espèces de plantes y ont été dénombrées, et jusqu’à 250 variétés d’arbres différentes sur un seul et même hectare. 

Cette expérience a poussé les artistes à imaginer le projet Perpetual Amazonia pour que cet hectare de terre soit conservé à perpétuité et dédié à la recherche scientifique, nous rappelant combien il est bénéfique, pour l'humanité entière, de protéger la forêt à long terme. L’ensemble d’oeuvres se compose de fleurs en tissus confectionnées à la main, de moulage en porcelaine, de photographies qui mettent l'accent sur des détails normalement invisibles pour l'œil humain. Tout en tissant des liens entre les paradigmes scientifiques, esthétiques et culturelles, il donne un aperçu de la diversité des organismes vivants en Amazonie et de la place qu'ils jouent dans l'évolution de la planète.



L’exposition Spécimens immerge les visiteurs dans un espace d’observation et d’interaction privilégié et invite à entrer dans une dynamique d’échanges pour mieux vivre ensemble

The cloud is an intermediary between two worlds. Its airy lightness and gas give free rein to the architectural imagination, whilst its liquid composition returns it to earth. The cloud, by virtue of its ubiquity, is an intercessor between reality and imagination, between heaven and earth, light and gravity. The absence of a stable form, which characterizes the cloud, is a powerful concept that embodies, with its dreams, the designs for an ideal society. Playing on its metamorphoses, it can convey, in the mode of fable, a more political message without gravity. Here, the message focuses on water, from which clouds are constituted, by asking how humans will share this resource on earth.

On galerieofmarseille’s stand at FIAC, Lucy + Jorge Orta will present Cloud Raft, one of the sculptures exhibited at La Maréchalerie – centre d’art de Versailles in 2011. Here the clouds proposed by Lucy + Jorge Orta take on greater material significance. They evoque the perturbations of the water cycle, its pollution, commodification and scarcity. Constituted from recycled plastic bottles, Cloud Raft refers in particular to the new plastic waste continents adrift on the world's oceans, a striking image of a doomed world. The reflection on the water is an undercurrent throughout several recent works of this binomial series, gathered under the title OrtaWater: machinery to distribute or recycle water, and vessels to ensure survival of the living after the environmental disasters that lie ahead. In this perspective, the cloud can be seen as a thermodynamic megamachine: it makes rain, recycles water and distributes it on our planet.

The artists will also be participating in FIAC Hors les Murs 2012 with the installation/action International Passport Distribution Bureau, presented on this occasion at the main entrance of the Jardin des Plantes.

http://www.fiac.com/galerie.html?ex=461#.UFMEI2i6T8s
http://www.fiac.com/hors-les-murs-jardin-plantes.html#.UFMD52i6T8s

In the framework of FIAC Hors les Murs 2012, at the main entrance of the Jardin des Plantes, Lucy + Jorge Orta present Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau, an important installation comprised of micro-architectures fabricated from recycled materials. This installation gives rise to an action: thousands of Antarctica World Passports will be distributed to visitors aspiring to become citizens of the new Antarctica global community.

Spectator-participants can join the tens of thousands of citizens who have already received individual passports, each of which affirms that, “Every human being has the right to move freely and cross frontiers to their chosen territory." These passport also propose an amendment to Article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 13.3 with the following statement: "Individuals should not be deemed of an inferior status to that of capital, trade, telecommunication and pollution, all of which have no boundaries."

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s Antarctica World Passport is a an original artwork to be treasured and passed on to future generation, an attribute of citizenship of the world but also a testament that art can change lives.

The Studio Orta team will be on site to distribute passports October 16, 5:30pm to 8pm & October 21, 1pm to 4pm.
http://www.fiac.com/hors-les-murs-jardin-plantes.html#.UFMD52i6T8s
Lucy + Jorge Orta will also be on view at FIAC on the stand of galerieofmarseille.http://www.fiac.com/galerie.html?ex=461#.UFMEI2i6T8s

Unlimited Bodies at Palais d’Iéna invites thirty international artists to engage sculpture in a one-on-one confrontation with its public. The exhibition highlights the metaphorical and allegorical transformations that occur to the body when it is treated as sculpture. Unlimited Bodies addresses the political body, the action and mobilization of citizens.

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s work Antarctica Fluvial Intervention Unit, evokes issues related to migration, refuge and shelter: “The third millenium belongs to mankind, who dream of great things”, is to be found inscribed inside the wooden boat. Accompanying this work will be Lucy + Jorge Orta’s Antarctica Passport Bureau. This work is at once an installation and participatory action. It proposes an amendment to Article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Art. 13:3 “Every human being has the right to move freely and cross frontiers to their chosen territory.” Visitors will be invited to register for an Antarctica World Passport, a precious, editioned artwork that will mark the visitor’s entry into the Antarctica world community. This work attests that the body and the body politic are inextricably linked.

Since 1959 the Palais d'Iéna is the headquarters of the Conseil économique, social et environnemental, third constitutional Assembly of the French Republic. These artists will move into the 1000 square meters of the Hypostyle room in the Palais d'Iéna for twelve days.

The scuplture-bodies of the show are of a human dimension and emphasize the formal analogy between sculpture and the human figure. The social and political dimensions of human beings are also part of sculpture's ambition. The displayed works directly question the place of the human being in today's world.

Open every day from 12am to 7pm. Monday 15 & 23 October 11am to 10pm

http://www.unlimitedbodies.com

"Five public sculptures – Spirits of the Huveaune – take the form of female characters along the valley of the river Huveaune, situated between the spring, deep in the Provence Alps and the estuary at the Mediterranean Sea port of Marseille. The sculptures, based on historical texts, legends and stories about the valley, recount the feminine presence associated with the river. The legendry, supernatural and the imaginary that perpetuate the history of the river Huveaune are the sources of inspiration." Lucy + Jorge Orta

The Huveaune coastal river in eastern Provence originates in the Massif de la Sainte Baume and flows all the way to the Mediterreanean Sea at Marseille. Although it has long facilitated myriad human activities from agriculture to industry, the Huveaune is now little known and often ill-treated. Eager to highlight the river's rich natural and cultural heritage and to strengthen the bonds among the neighborhoods and municipalities that share it, the Association Rives et Cultures has commissioned a work by artists Lucy + Jorge Orta under the auspices of Fondation de France’s Nouveaux commanditaire and Marseille-Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture.

Titled Le Chemin des fées, the artists have devised a parcours of five sculptures that pay homage to the Huveaune's presence in four municipalities: la Fée de la source (Marie) – the Martellière, Saint-Zacharia; la Fée du pont (Ubelka) – Moulin Saint-Claude, Auriol; la Fée des berges (Manon) – Îlot des Berges Park, Aubagne; la Fée du vieux moulin (Gyptis) – Vieux Moulin Park, Marseille; and la Fée du lac (Ophélie) – Borély Park, Marseille.

These fairies, dreaming or alert, melancholic or resolved, invest these sites like genii loci and weave an unprecedented link between the past and the present. They invite visitors to discover the Huveaune through stories and to invent new ways to live alongside it. Referring to the universal water cycle, Le Chemin des fées aims to raise public awareness of environmental issues related to the river’s fate, thereby raising the question of water management in the future, here and elsewhere.

http://www.mp2013.fr/au-programme/nouveaux-commanditaires-2/lucy-et-jorge-orta-le-chemin-des-fees/

For the 9th Shanghai Biennale, Lucy + Jorge Orta are commissioned to make three large-scale interventions for the Museum of Contemporary Art: OrtaWater Purification Factory, Antarctica World Passport Delivery Village and Nexus Architecture.

OrtaWater Purification Factory is a fully functioning, mobile water purification system. The work will draw from Shanghai’s Huang Pu River and will pump water up 20 metres into the museum’s third floor. It will be purified in a bamboo ‘factory’ and then clean drinking water snaked around the museum for the visitors to taste, enjoy and take away in a specially designed OrtaWater bottle.

Due to the effects of global warming it is estimated that sea levels will raise 0.5 to 1.4 metres over the next 100 years. Antarctica World Passport Delivery Village is comprised of a collection of small huts made from reclaimed materials, erected on stilts and interconnected by a raised platform of bamboo. A Metisse Flag will indicate the delivery bureau, where a passport officer will hand out the third edition of the Antarctica World Passport. Printed in Chinese for the occasion of the Shanghai Biennale, tens of thousands of passports will be distributed to museum visitors. New members will be welcomed into the Antarctica world community based on the founding principles of the Antarctic Treaty.

Nexus Architecture is both an installation and a performance. These ephemeral interventions draw performers and passers-by alike into choreographed scenarios, later documented in photographs and on film. By climbing into specially conceived suits and zippering the Nexus, participants challenge the premise of interdependence, asserting chosen community as a means to personal liberation.

On September 6, 2012 University Art Gallery inaugurates the first comprehensive exhibition of the work of Lucy + Jorge Orta available to American museums. This exhibition will explore how the artists' unique visual language tackles the global issues affecting our lives. Three projects – Food Water Life - spanning close to two decades of collaborative work, will be presented: Hortirecyling (1997-2005), OrtaWater (2005-2007) and Antarctica (1990-2009).

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s artwork communicates widely to audiences beyond the field of contemporary art, demonstrating the importance of art as a creative agent for awareness and change. During the next three years, the artists will stage on-location workshops, ephemeral interventions, residencies and master classes that explore the crucial themes of the contemporary world: the community, autonomy, dwelling, migration, sustainable development and recycling.

This exhibition will tour to Zikha Gallery, Wesleyan University (January 22–March 3, 2013), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (January 25–May 25, 2014) and Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University, Greencastle (February 5–May 7, 2015) with other venues to be announced.

http://curatorsquared.com/lucyjorge-orta-collaboration/http://artgallery.tufts.edu/exhibitions/traveling.htm

As part of London's Festival of the World, thousands of visitors are arriving this summer at The Southbank Centre to join Lucy + Jorge Orta's Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau and to become global citizens.

The Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau, a huge labyrinth installation of reclaimed materials will issue 30,000 facsimile passport documents to the festival visitors aspiring to become a citizen of the new Antarctica world community. The applicants will join the tens of thousands of citizens who have already received an individual passport, an original artwork to be treasured and passed on the future generations as a testament to how art can change lives and what it means to be a citizen of the world.

The Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959 states that Antarctica is a common territory dedicated to cultural and scientific cooperation and all military activity is banned. Antarctica exemplifies a community that strives for peace and social progress. Originally commissioned by The End of the World Biennale, Usuahia Argentina, Lucy + Jorge Orta's Antarctica body of work developed from an expedition and installation conducted in Antarctica in 2007.

The Antarctica body of work has been touring the world. Of particular significance most recently are the two Festival of the World installations at the Southbank Centre—on the Festival Hall roof are raised 44 impressive flags that indicate the presence of the passport public engagement project inside the gallery. Antarctica is also the topic of two monograph publications and will be the subject of a installation in the Shanghai Biennale (Oct 2012) and a US tour from 2012-2015 as well as a major retrospective at Park de la Villette in Paris (2013-2014).

The Southbank Centre opens the Festival of the World for the Diamond Jubilee Weekend with the unveiling of an outdoor landscape that visitors can explore for the duration of the three-month long celebrations. Bringing together artists from around the globe who are demonstrating that when people work creatively together, individual lives and communities can change for the better. Highlights include two ambitious new works from Lucy + Jorge Orta's Antarctica series: Métisse Flag and Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau.

The artists’ Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau, a huge labyrinth installation of reclaimed materials inside the Southbank’s Spirit Level Gallery will issue 30,000 facsimile passport documents to the festival visitors aspiring to become a citizen of the new Antarctica world community. The applicants will join the tens of thousands of citizens who have already received an individual passport, an original artwork to be treasured and passed on the future generations as a testament to how art can change lives and what it means to be a citizen of the world.

Their second artwork, a monumental crown of flags will be raised above the roof of the Royal Festival Hall. The Métisse Flag, which was first created for their Antarctic expedition in 2007, will stand proudly over looking the river Thames as a symbol of the festival, allowing all peoples to coexist harmoniously as the nations’ emblems merge to create a larger common identity.

The Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959 states that Antarctica is a common territory dedicated to cultural and scientific cooperation and all military activity is banned. Antarctica exemplifies a community that strives for peace and social progress.

CARBON 12, at the Espace Foundation EDF presents the ongoing cultural and scientific projects of Cape Farewell through the works of five artists who have taken part in Cape Farewell’s expeditions and who have closely collaborated with leading climate scientists. Their resulting artworks and scientific research on exhibition encompasses biodiversity, atmospherics and oceanography — earth, wind and sea.

Lucy + Jorge Orta took part in the 2009 Andes Expedition, Cape Farewell's first expedition outside the Arctic, an 18 day trek through shrinking glaciers, cloud forests, lower forests, areas of deforestation and the Amazon. The results of this expedition and the work they undertook with the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University was exhibited at the Natural History Museum in London in 2009.
Part of this exhibition Amazonia has been re-configured especially for CARBON 12 and a number of new works created in the series Perpetual Amazonia – the artists ‘cultural plot’ in the Peruvian Amazon.

Cape Farewell was created by the artist David Buckland in 2001 to instigate a cultural response to climate change. It is now an international not-for-profit programme based in the Science Museum's Dana Centre in London and the MaRS centre in Toronto. “The cultural shift required to build sustainable cultures will require the engagement of our best creative minds to address the causes of climate change and envisage, design and communicate resilient futures. The aim is to challenge, provoke and inspire audiences to think differently about our relationship with each other and the natural systems we inhabit.”

To kick start the 40th birthday celebrations of Smiths Row, Lucy + Jorge Orta have been invited to re-imagine 70x7 The Meal in the historic gallery space. 70x7 The Meal, act XXXIII is a visual celebration of food, community and the natural world.

This site-specific installation takes the form of a long and beautiful dinner table set for 42 guests. Focusing on particular regional characteristics of food production and heritage skills, landscape and foraging, wildlife and the web of nature, Lucy + Jorge have crafted an installation that illustrates the poetic relationship between these different aspects of East Anglian culture.

Elements of the table setting have been hand crafted especially for the occasion – a limited edition silk jacquard table runner by Humphries Weaving in Suffolk, the porcelain dinner service by Royal Limoges in France and the bronze candelabra are cast from found olive branches. The motifs in their designs reference the bountiful yet fragile nature of our environment - the bee, the flower bud - and the poetry inscribed onto the artworks are derived from a number of literary and scientific sources on issues surrounding the preservation of our resources: “ Tug at any one thing in nature and the rest will move." (Petrucci)

Fabulae Romanae curated by Maria Luisa Frisa, is an ambitious sculpture and video installation specifically created by Lucy + Jorge Orta for MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts and that will form part the Museum’s new display Tridimensionale.

Fabulae Romanae is symbolic excursus that traces the artists’ key themes: starting with Refuge Wear, “a nomadic form of shelter, a small portable habitat, which combines in a single conceptual solution the physical, social, and symbolic functions of architecture and clothing”, as described by Maria Luisa Frisa.

The new Dome Dwelling sculptures in the exhibition are framed by Fabulae Romanae - Spirits, an immense large screen video performance that was recently filmed in Rome. The mysterious Spirits, who interact with the city’s architecture, embody the ethereal sentinels entrusted with the task of restoring the vital breath of the city. The scenarios these metaphorical characters enact are beautifully articulated through a series of spoken verses composed for the film by the poet Mario Petrucci.

Fabulae Romanae is commissioned by Ermenegildo Zegna and is the first Special Project of the initiative ZegnArt, a multi-faceted and multi-year project dedicated to the field of contemporary visual arts. To close the exhibition Zegna will donate a sculpture to the MAXXI’s permanent collection.

Fabulae Romanae has the support of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion and has been made possible with the assistance of alumni from the College: Chloé Gayet, Mio Jin, Lara Torres, Oliver Ruuger and Sum Yu Li.

http://www.zegnart.com/lucy-jorge-orta-fabulae-romanae

As early as 1846, the Vlisco company, based in Helmond, served the West African market with Dutch Wax textiles. From 29 January through 6 May, 2012, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem will present Six Yards Guaranteed Dutch Design, an exhibition about how Vlisco’s Dutch textiles became a part of various West African cultures and found their way into international fashion, the visual arts, and photography.

The exhibition Six Yards is a tribute to Vlisco textiles: over a hundred years old, born in Indonesia, designed in the Netherlands, loved in Africa, and desired in the West.
These colourful fabrics make their way to fashion shows in Paris, the markets in Ghana, and galleries in London and New York.

The exhibition, curated by the Suze May Sho artists’ collective, explores the history of the textiles and their stories, touches on Dutch (post-)colonial history, takes a look at the differences and similarities between Western and non-Western cultures, and sheds light on how visual artists as well as top designers around the world have been inspired by Vlisco’s textiles.

Artists, photographers, and fashion designers include Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, Fatimah Tuggar, Viviane Sassen, Lucy Orta, Hans Eijkelboom, Seydou Keïta, Andrea Spotorno, Meschac Gaba, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Collectie Arnhem, Harvey Bouterse, Acne, Marga Weimans, Dries van Noten, PetrouMan, Querijn Maurits Ver Huell en Vlisco designers.

Cette exposition présente des artistes contemporains qui ont choisi de mettre l’exploration au centre de leurs démarches.

Les nouveaux artistes explorateurs, éprouvent les différentes cultures, appréhendent des territoires nouveaux, cherchent de nouvelles façons de voir, d’habiter la planète, tout cela est source d’expérimentations et de sensibilité. Il s’agit souvent de sortir du contexte occidental et d’aller se confronter physiquement à des situations non conventionnelles, hors de toute dimension pittoresque ou touristique.

Il est question de géographie. Aller loin, arpenter concrètement le territoire pour s’en imprégner. Et retranscrire par des dessins, par des cartes, des maquettes, des films ou des pierres cette réalité que constitue la surface de notre planète. Il est aussi question de comportement. Quelle est notre place!? Quelle est notre influence!? Quelles sont les traces que nous laissons!? Comment considère-t-on des contrées lointaines comme l’Antarctique ou l’Afghanistan!? Au-delà de la simple appréhension physique du territoire, ce sont aussi ces relations à l’environnement et aux autres qui sont évoquées et bousculées dans l’exposition Les Nouveaux Explorateurs.

Explorer le monde nous confronte à l’impact de nos civilisations. L’aventure est loin d’être anecdotique.

The new body of work Clouds | Nuages is co-commissioned by Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles énsa-v and La Maréchalerie for an exhibition in the contemporary arts centre and the Galerie des Moulages of the Louvre museum in Versailles.

Clouds | Nuages draws from the artists previous research on issues effecting our environment, in particular the theme of water. Leading from their project OrtaWater, the artworks pose questions about the scarcity of this natural resource, the exploitation, purification and the distribution networks. The recycling communities in Cairo inspire the artists as well as the lifespan of the water bottle that gradually disintegrates to create the enormous floating islands in our Oceans. In Versailles, these environmental threats radiate with an unexpected lightness and hedonism. Waste materials undergo metamorphosis. Technological processes, exuberant metallic colours and Baroque shapes confront us with a bright and optimistic world.

La Maréchalerie - centre d’art contemporain | énsa-v
5, avenue de Sceaux, 78 000 Versailles, France
http://lamarechalerie.versailles.archi.fr

70 x 7 The Meal act XXVI is the 26th act in Lucy + Jorge Orta’s ongoing banquets in support of the ArtAids, to raise public consciousness and to encourage involvement in artistic projects aimed at preventing and fighting Aids.

The artists were inspired by the work of Padre Rafael Garcia H. (1909-1990) who initiated a series of benefit banquets to set in motion a major urban social development program entitled El minuto de Dios. The artist’s base their banquets on the symbol seven, which represents infinity in numerous ancestral cultures and in particular the biblical signification ad infinitum.

On the 8th September 2011, a dinner for 77 guests will be staged at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, a fragment of which is exhibited in the exhibition You Are Not Alone.
The table on exhibition is set with 7 beautiful limited edition Royal Limoges porcelain plates each with different motifs: the artichoke is the artists' symbol of the heart; the spectrum contains contextual colours that represent specific places or events that have moved them and the graphic measurements propose different symbolic levels to gauge social behaviour.
The printed table linens, also limited editions, are hand-embroidered by Fine Cell Work, a charity that rehabilitates prisoners by giving them the opportunity to earn and save money and rebuild their lives through craft and achievement.

For their first solo exhibition at galerieofmarseille, the artists present a series of work from the Antarctica project.
Antarctica embodies the hope for a neutral peaceful land, free of conflict. Dome Dwelling, Drop parachute, Window on the World, as well as preparatory drawings are some of the emblematic artworks referring to the right of freedom of movement exhibited alongside the Antarctica World Passport - Delivery Bureau.

The Antarctica World Passport proposes an amendment to Article 13 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 13 :3 “Every human being has the right to move freely and cross frontiers to their chosen territory. Individuals should not be deemed of an inferior status to that of capital, trade, telecommunication and pollution, all of which have no boundaries".

Passports are distributed during the exhibition to new citizens wishing to join the online community developed by MIT at http://antarcticaworldpassport.mit.edu/citizens/news

The Fundació Joan Miró and the ArtAids Foundation present You Are Not Alone, an exhibition curated by Hilde Teerlinck together with Irene Aristizábal.
In You Are Not Alone fourteen contemporary artists from around the world are invited to respond with their individual artistic visions to the causes, consequences and current context of Aids, and to suggest ways of fighting it.

Lucy + Jorge Orta present 70 x 7 The Meal act XXVI, a table set with 7 beautiful limited edition Royal Limoges porcelain plates each with different motifs: the artichoke is the artists' symbol of the heart; the spectrum contains contextual colours that represent specific places or events that have moved them and the graphic measurements propose different symbolic levels to gauge social behaviour.
The printed table linens, also limited editions, are hand-embroidered by Fine Cell Work, a charity that rehabilitates prisoners by giving them the opportunity to earn and save money and rebuild their lives through craft and achievement.

As part of the ongoing 70 x 7 The Meal project, on the 8th September 2011 Lucy + Jorge Orta will host a dinner for 77 guests at the Fundació Joan Miró. Through the daily ritual of dining, the artist aim at raising public consciousness and at encouraging involvement in artistic projects with the intention to prevent and fight Aids.

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s 70 x 7 The Meal, takes its starting point with a multiplication game designed to stimulate conviviality and communication. The work sets up encounters between multiples of seven guests at a potentially endless series of meals. The 70 x 7 The Meal series is an excellent example of a new form of interactive work in which the artist develops a proactive practice in order to encourage direct experiential engagement and communication between the artwork and different audiences.

For 70 x7 The Meal Act XXXII at MAXXI museum in Rome, Lucy + Jorge Orta have been invited by Umberto Veronesi Foundation for its annual charity gala dinner to reflect on the healthy diet which is not only the companion of well-being, but also the new frontier of medicine in the field of prevention.

The artists have designed especially for this convivial occasion two series of limited edition Royal Limoges porcelain plates inspired by vegetables and fruits, at the base of our well-being.
By bringing people together around a table to reflect on and discuss one of the most urgent needs of our society, Lucy + Jorge Orta create a public awareness and contribute to the scientific research. The funds raised at the gala dinner will be used to support young doctors and researchers.
Once more, as the artists use to say, art can be a catalyst for a social transformation.

Umberto Veronesi Foundation was established in 2003 to support the scientific research, through the assignment of research Grant for doctors and researchers, and also to sustain some high profile projects.