Lucy + Jorge Orta Food - Water - Life

by Orta, Lucy; Orta, Jorge

• ISBN13: 9781568989914
• ISBN10: 1568989911
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-04
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Summary

The work of artists Lucy and Jorge Orta is widely published, yet we know little of their broader approach to contemporary art and the projects they conduct together. In 1993, the two artists founded their collective studio in central Paris and began a unique partnership. They create, produce, and assemble their artworks and large installations together with a team of artists, designers, architects, craftsmen, and curators. Parallel and feeding into their studio practice, they stage on-location workshops, ephemeral interventions, residencies, and master classes that explore the crucial themes of the contemporary world: the community, social exclusion, dwelling, migration, sustainable development, and recycling. Their unique visual language tackles the global issues that are affecting our livelihoods, and their work communicates successfully to audiences beyond the field of contemporary art and, as a consequence, reflects on the artists role as creative agents for awareness and change. Lucy + Jorge Orta explores recent works from the artists that fall into three categories: Water, Environment, and Food. The Ortas often do work related to these themes in the forms of individual "acts," which can develop and build on each other over a decade or more. For example, they made their first "Food" act in 1997, called All in One Basket. This project consisted of an open-air buffet in the Les Halles district of Paris where all the food items were made using salvaged fruit that had been discarded from local fruit and vegetable markets. Eleven years later, the Ortas held the twenty-ninth food act, 70 x 7 The Meal act XXIX, which was held inside the historical Savoy palace of Venaria Reale outside the city of Turin in Italy. The multicourse feast, which consisted solely of varieties of soup, was held to support rural Argentinean populations. In contrast to the ornate setting of the palace, the Ortas created a huge vegetable kitchen live performance at the head of the dining table, where they cleaned and chopped mountains of organic vegetables for each of the guests to take home in a hand-printed bag. A Limoges porcelain plate was designed especially for the occasion, celebrating the theme by depicting delicately drawn vegetables and a recipe for potato soup, to be cooked using the vegetables the artists prepared. The Food acts continue to be planned and executed. Lucy + Jorge Orta is full of images of the artists' work, and also includes essays by curators Zoe Ryan and Ellen Lupton, an interview with the artists by Hou Hanru, and an analytical essay by curators Judith Hoos Fox and Ginger Gregg Duggan.