Studio Orta

These embroidered text works are drawn from one of forty verses of a poem commissioned by Lucy + Jorge Orta as a voice script for the film Amazonia. Written by eco-poet Mario Petrucci in collaboration with the artists, the poem unfolds as a dialogue between the ancestral figure of Mother Earth, Gaia, and her rational counterpart, Progress.

Inspired by the artists’ first expedition to the Amazon rainforest in 2009, the poetry reflects their sensorial experience of the region. In Gaia’s words:
“It all happens here – between cloud and air,
between water and vapour,
between a plant and its root,
between sunbeam and green.
Here – between my forest and the steam it makes of rain –
the world is that web strung between.”

The journey took the artists to 4,800 metres above sea level in the Andes, to the source of the Amazon River, where they witnessed receding glaciers and documented plant species migrating upslope from the elfin forest below. Descending through cloud forest along the Trocha Unión Inca trade route — increasingly unstable due to landslides — they eventually reached a tributary of the Amazon and travelled along the mercury-contaminated waters of the Madre de Dios.

The embroidered works invite reflection on the accelerating tension between technological expansion and ecological systems. Progress states: 
“Globally, something like a dozen hectares of forest are lost every minute — over six million annually. Twice the size of Belgium. Each year, between 18 and 50 thousand species may sink into history. Each hour, approximately four extinctions — between 100 and 1000 times the natural rate. The fate of as many as a million species may hinge on habitat loss and climate change.”

Gaia counters with a warning:
“Tug at any one thing. The rest will move.”