Lucy Orta
| Lucy Orta | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1966 Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Known for | Visual Art |
| Awards | United Nations Environment Programme Green Leaf Award for Sculpture (2007) |
Lucy Orta (born 1966 in Sutton Coldfield) is an English contemporary visual artist living and working between London and Paris where she has resided since 1991. She was born in 1966 in Sutton Coldfield, Great Britain.
After graduating with an honours degree in fashion-knitwear design, Lucy Orta began practicing as a visual artist in 1991. Her sculptural work investigates the boundaries between the body and architecture, exploring their common social factors such as communication and identity. Orta's most emblematic works include: Refuge Wear and Body Architecture (1992–1998), portable architecture, lightweight and autonomous structures representing issues of survival. Nexus Architecture (1994–2002) are participative interventions in which a variable number of people wear suits connected to each other, shaping modular and collective structures, which visualize the concept of social link. Urban Life Guards (2004–ongoing) are wearable objects that reflect on the body as a metaphorical supportive structure.
Lucy Orta’s work has been the focus of major survey exhibitions at the Wiener Secession Vienna (1999); USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (2001), for which she received the Andy Warhol Foundation grant; and Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005). She has participated in international art biennales in Venice, Italy; Havana, Cuba; Johannesburg, South Africa; Athens, Greece; and the Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea and was an invited speaker at TED x WWF in 2013.
In 1993 Lucy Orta founded Les Moulins together with her partner Jorge Orta with whom she now collaborates. Their major artworks include: Connector, OrtaWater, 70 x 7 The Meal, Antarctica, and Spirits. Lucy + Jorge Orta are currently restoring a complex of artist studios and residencies on former industrial buildings sites situated along the Grand Morin river in Marne La Vallée as a living extension of their practice: “The staging of a social bond ”( Pierre Restany, Process of Transformation. Ed. JM Place Paris 1996 ). Their collaborative work. which often deals with environmental sustainability and urgent humanitarian crises, has been the focus of major exhibitions at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Venice, Italy (2005); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006); Galleria Continua, San Gimignano/ Beijing / Le Moulin (2007); Biennale del fin del Mundo, Antarctica (2007); Hangar Bicocca spazio d'arte, Milan (2008), Natural History Museum, London (2010); Shanghai Biennale (2012); MAXXI – National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome (2012); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2013); and Parc de la Villette, Paris (2014). In 2013 they were awarded the inaugural Terrace Wires commission in London, with the monumental artwork Meteoros.
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