Studio Orta

BorderLands at Hay Castle, curated by Meadow Arts, explores the emotional, political, and cultural dimensions of borders and boundaries. The exhibition invites dialogue around connection, unity, and our collective responsibility to address urgent global concerns. A new edition of the Antarctica Flag by Lucy + Jorge Orta will fly from the highest tower of the castle—a symbol of hope, the edges of identities blur into a shared, interdependent horizon: a supranational emblem of an enlarged community.

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Curated by Michael Arzt, the group exhibition Botenstoffe at Halle 14 presents fabrics as messengers, highlighting the hidden global networks behind textile production—from exploitative labor conditions to the environmental damage caused by cotton cultivation and synthetic fibres. It also recalls the historical role of textiles in industrialisation, colonial trade, and cultural storytelling. Lucy + Jorge Orta present works from the series Procession Banners 1918-2018 and Archipelago.

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Lucy + Jorge Orta are pleased to present from root to rain, their third solo exhibition at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York. From the Amazon rainforest to the desert of Saudi Arabia, this exhibition spans painting, embroidery, tapestry, and film to examine environments shaped by ecological instability, translating fieldwork into poetic visual forms.

At the center of the exhibition are three woven tapestries, which function as maps, drawing on celestial navigation and ancient cosmologies to understand humanity’s place within the natural world. The Wadi Hanifah Embroidery Landscape intertwine an abstract narrative of desert survival. Resilient desert plants, shrubs, and trees are embroidered onto coloured canvas paired with geometric motifs derived from Al Sadu, the traditional weaving practice of Bedouin women. Through triangles and lozenge clusters referencing star formations and desert flora, the works articulate a visual language of adaptation and resilience amid accelerating urbanization and climate change. Fabulae Naturae paintings extend the artists’ inquiry into the mythic and symbolic dimensions of nature. Enlarged petals and botanical forms dissolve into layered fields of saturated pigment, hovering between figuration and abstraction. The film Amazonia situates the exhibition within the artists’ broader investigation of interwoven ecosystems. 

Through textiles, paintings, poetry, and film, 'from root to rain' presents a meditation on species and the accelerating transformations of our natural world. The interlacing of mediums throughout the exhibition mirrors the interconnectedness of environmental systems, offering a visual reflection on coexistence, fragility, and the urgent need for ecological care. 

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The exhibition Community Threads emerges from a collaboration between CasermArcheologica, Lucy + Jorge Orta and curator Simonetta Carbonaro, during a residency in the Valtiberina region in July 2025 and the encounter with local residents invited to reflect on their attachment to the region.

This participatory process and testimonies collected form a site-specific installation: an encampment of five tent-like sculptures made from Tuscan linen and hemp. Drawing on the ancient archetype of the tent as a place of shelter and community, the work evokes gathering as a fundamental human gesture. Each one is formed from embroidered panels bearing the portraits of the participants, interwoven with gold pearls that amplify spoken memory. Ninety-nine hand-modelled terracotta forms—referencing local plants, animals and minerals—hang like amulets, anchoring the textiles and symbolising a fragile yet resilient communal ecology.

Conceived as a living space of encounter, 'Community Threads' transforms personal story into shared consciousness. As Carbonaro notes, “the work does not simply represent a community—it actively calls one into being, inviting collective reflection, participation and the imagining of new, possible futures.”

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Migrations and Climate explores the dynamics of migration in relation to climate change through artistic, scientific and public perspectives. Lucy + Jorge Orta present a major installation of their long-term research project Antarctica, including Antarctic Village No Borders from the museum collection and Antarctica World Passport Office with a new edition of the passport printed for the occasion (Ed. 9).

Curators: Bruno Girveau, Élisabeth Jolys-Shimells and Gabriel Picot

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Lucy + Jorge Orta: Homo Mondialis

Through intricate embroidery and appliqué works, sculpture and immersive video installations, Lucy + Jorge Orta's survey exhibition curated by artsitic director Laurie Peake for the 2025 British Textile Biennial crosses continents and oceans, from the polar ice cap to the jungle, from the desert to the forest.

The artists are modern day explorers and storytellers, working with environmental scientists across the globe in an attempt to comprehend the impact of man’s production and consumption on natural habitats through the centuries. The works on show represent a survey of Lucy’s textile works that capture her observations on man’s enduring relationship with the environment and the lessons we urgently need to learn from this precious place we currently inhabit in order to survive its increasingly extreme climates, of our own making.

'Homo Mondialis' invites you on a journey, to discover humanity’s ancestral knowledge and the ancient wisdom that learnt from nature, enabling people to survive in the most challenging conditions, using the earth’s resources without destroying them and living in harmony with the planet.

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Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 'Re-Constellations' examines how ancient interpretations of celestial bodies relate to the modern dynamics of globalisation and localisation.

Lucy + Jorge Orta present Archipelago, immense textile maps representing islands and countries of Southeast Asia. The linen canvases are embroidered with nautical lines and compass roses taken from early 17th-century Dutch and British maritime trade maps. The work speaks to the cultural and ecological impact of the transcontinental network of economic and political interests that governed relationships between Asia and Europe, formally the Silk Route. The islands are crafted with textiles originating from South East Asia–Java batik, Chinese jacquard, Japanese prints, Malay embroideries–assembled to simulate imaginary topographies and ornamented with beaded silk flowers. 'Archipelago' offers a poetic and silent plea against environmental degradation caused by overconsumption.

Curators: Shi Hui, Assadour Markarov, Jiang Jun, Huang Yan and Xu Jia

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Making reference to Paul Eluard's poem 'Les Yeux fertiles', the exhibition at Havas Paris headquarters welcomes visitors through a forest of gigantic and vibrant species. The monumental wall drawings by Lucy + Jorge Orta draw from their research investigating the natural environment and species loss, creating a poetic dialogue between contemporary urban architecture and threatened biodiversity.

Curator: The Caring Gallery

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Jane Lombard Gallery, Lucy + Jorge Orta present recent their most paintings Fabulae Naturae, underscoring a longstanding commitment to evolving forms of representation to alert to the fragility of our natural world in the face of the human impact of global warming and deforestation.

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This major exhibition investigates how artists and activists from around the world understand the interrelations between living beings, humans, their creations, and the environments they inhabit. Among the featured works, Body Architecture by Lucy + Jorge Orta explores the macrocosm of community and modular collective dwellings by creating physical links between individuals and symbolising the many emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual ties that connect us.
 
Curators: Adriano Pedrosa, André Mesquita and Isabella Rjeille

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Lucy + Jorge’s latest public sculpture Il Nido is an elegant 4-metre bronze tree drawing together three forms of representation. The trunk, a tower of gnarled olive roots with their knots and scars registering wounds inflicted; Pollino’s endangered birds, bearing witness to the fragile ecological balance of the woodland; and the local stones as mineral anchors, symbolising the resilience of geological time.

‘Il Nido’ marks the artists’ third artwork for Pollino in collaboration with Associazione ArtePollino, and the support of the Municipality of Lauria.

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The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025 is dedicated to art’s capacity to forge dialogues and to afford us sensitivity towards societal concerns, such as ecology, survival and living together. Presented are works from Lucy + Jorge Orta’s ‘Lifeline’ series that refer to both physical and material survival and more symbolically to the spiritual needs of man, such as affection and solidarity – as gestures of comfort that can be extended out to those in need.

Curator: Farshid Moussavi

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The exhibition Potential Architecture condenses some of the key concepts on which Lucy + Jorge Orta have focused their research over the last three decades. In particular, the potential of new forms of dwelling and ways of living in relationship with our identity, the environment, frontiers, and cross border migration.

The body of works presented by SPARC, includes a series of large format drawings and collage, architectural models in light-steel and hand-blown glass and key work from the Antarctica project, a tent dwelling appliquéd with clothes, gloves and silkscreen printed world flags that addresses international human rights and the value of the natural environment to our daily lives and to our survival. Architecture has a key role in shaping the artists’ practice and concepts, through which it is possible to imagine the cohabitation of humans and non-humans today and for the future.

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Âmes vertes —Green Souls— is an exhibition curated by French historian Paul Ardenne at Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille from 8 February to 1 June 2025. This exhibition invites audiences to reflect on their relationship with the living world through artworks that strive for ecological moderation and shape new ecosophical models.

A highlight of the exhibition is Symphony for Absent Wildlife (2014-2020). This immersive installation features a life-size orchestra dressed in felt top and tails, wearing masks of creatures once abundant on the Albertan plains of Canada. Bison, moose, wapiti, wolves, grizzly bears, mountain goats, beavers, and eagles have been pushed to near extinction by exploitative human practices. The costumed orchestra, video, and soundscape create a fully immersive environment, evoking the loss of cultural heritage and endangered ecosystems.

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What happens when we not only accept the walls around us as a given, but consciously perceive, conquer, and shape them?

This question will be explored through the pioneering BODY ARCHITECTURE works by Lucy Orta, presented in the exhibition My Room More than 4 Walls at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Junge Kunsthalle from 1 February to 21 September 2025. Young audiences will be invited to interact with the arm, hood, or leg appendages of the sculpture, exploring ways in which dwelling spaces are constructed emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually.

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Meteoros refers to the ancient Greek word meaning “high in the air.” Clouds also evoke the cycles of water, exploring its scarcity and abundance, a theme we have been investigating through the long-term project OrtaWater since 2005. In this work, clouds carry life-size figures on an imaginary journey through the skies. METEOROS (2015) is presented in a new installation at The Hyundai Daegu and The Hyundai Pangyo in South Korea from 2 January to 31 May 2025. Visitors will experience the work up close, where mirror plinths create the impression of clouds floating in space, challenging ways in which sculpture engages with everyday life.

We are thrilled to share the trailer for the feature film SEED, directed by David Bickerstaff, set to premiere at film festivals soon.

Jorge Orta, who endured the brutal military regime that terrorized Argentina between 1974-1983, revisits his past in this poignant film. During this ‘Dirty War,’ suspected communists, artists, intellectuals, and writers were detained, tortured, and raped under a state-sponsored campaign of eradication. In response, Jorge created many performances and artworks that could not be revealed at the time.

Decades later, Jorge embarks on a journey from the spectacular deserts of Central America to the streets of Buenos Aires, recalling the corruption and performing acts of protest and resistance. Using non-actors and minimal dialogue, this film is a poetic exploration of one man’s journey through an epic landscape, reflecting on the loss of innocence, oppressive states, and human cruelty.

For the 60th October Salon, Lucy + Jorge Orta staged the 47th act of  70 x 7 The Meal. Under the framework of ‘Trace’ curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Dobrila Denegri, this inaugural commission for the biennale was devised as a collective proposition to create a dialogue between artists, the city's cultural scene and the structures that determine cultural policy at the local and state level.
 
200 guests convened in front of the Cultural Centre of Belgrade on Friday, October 18, around a table setting which aimed to answer questions devised in conversation with Serbian artists and cultural sector workers. Four thematic areas explored the conditions under which artists are working, the role of the artist in society today, the needs of the cultural organisations and how national policies effect cultural practices. To facilitate conversations, guests found provocations printed on the table runners and embroidered on napkins realized by collective NEpraktične žeNE forming a collective manifesto that further unfolded through interactions during the meal courtesy of chef Vladimir Zoplet. 

My centre everywhere, the special project for Moderne Art Fair as artistes invités, is inspired by the poem ‘Amazonia’ written by British eco-poet Mario Petrucci and based on video footage recorded by Lucy and Jorge in the Amazon rainforest. Commencing in the Andes where mountain glaciers are melting at a faster rate than ever recorded and descending to the Amazon river basin where mercury mining is devasting the river’s ecological balance, Petrucci reconstructs the artists’ expedition through the positionality of Gaia, and Man, a dichotomy between the ecologically-centred thinking and Progress.

The installation comprised of a range of different artworks from the artists’ Amazonia series, forming a interrelated microcosm of mediums and formats that reflect the imaginary and complexity of our natural world. We see trees, plants, flowers, insects, birds rendered in drawing, painting, crafted in textiles, embroidered, and sculpted. The artworks are a compilation of visual and sensory data collected and transcribed from regions of the world the artists have visited, indicative of the interwoven nature of biodiversity they observe first-hand. Further information in the catalogue.

My centre everywhere was made possible thanks to Hum media, with special thanks to Frederick Moraux and Flavie Durand-Ruel.

For the Jing’an International Sculpture Project 2024 curated by UCCA Lab, Lucy + Jorge Orta presented Genius Loci —a new commission in the Genius Loci series, representing the ‘spirit of the place’ traversing time, past, present, future, shaping cultural, social and ecological transitions.