Lucy and Jorge Orta

Artists

Lucy and Jorge Orta joined 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.

Contemporary artists Lucy and Jorge Orta have been collaborating since 1991. Their studios are situated in central Paris, The Dairy and Les Moulins two historical buildings, which now house their production studios for the production of their artworks, commissions and limited editions. The artist duo, assemble their artworks and installations together with a team of curators, artists, architects, designers, skilled technicians and craftsmen.

Parallel and feeding into their studio practice of sculpture and painting, they stage ephemeral interventions, performances, workshops, which explore the crucial themes of contemporary world: the environment and sustainable development, habitat and community, mobility and migration.

They have exhibited their work in major contemporary art museums around the world including: Hangar Biccoca Milano; Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa Venezia; Barbican Art Gallery London; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam; ICA London; Modern Art Museum Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; as well as the Venice, Havana and Johannesburg Biennials.

Lucy Orta was born in Sutton Coldfield, UK in 1966. Trained as a fashion designer at Nottingham Trent University Lucy’s early sculptural work examines the boundaries between the body and architecture, investigating their common social factors such as communication and identity. She invented Refuge Wear and Body Architecture (1992–98); Nexus Architecture (1994–2002) and Urban Life Guards (2004). Professor Orta was a founding member of the Man & Humanity Master in Industrial Design for the Design Academy Eindhoven (2002), a pioneering master program that stimulates socially driven and sustainable design. She was invested as the first Rootstein Hopkins Chair at the University of the Arts London. (2002–2008) and now holds the title of Professor of Art, Fashion and the Environment.

Jorge Orta was born in Rosario, Argentina in 1953. Trained in both fine arts and architecture, Jorge began his career as a painter, graduating simultaneously from the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Rosario. During the dictatorship throughout the 1970s he developed ephemeral work such as mail art and performance. He was the first Argentine artist to explore video installations and projections at the San Paolo Biennale in Brazil. Jorge Orta received a French Ministry of Culture scholarship and moved to Paris in 1982 to pursue a PhD. Parallel to his studio practice, he began experimenting with and developed the technology for large-scale image projection in the early 1980s. In the series Light Works he has illuminated mythical sites and architecture of cultural and ecological importance across the world: Aso Volcano Japan, Capadoccia Turkey, the Zocòlo Mexico City, and the Venetian Palaces along the Grand Canal representing Argentina for the Venice Biennale in 1995.

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