The work of Lucy and Jorge Orta explores major concerns that define the twenty-first century: biodiversity, the environment, climate change and communication. This exhibition examines how the artists’ unique visual language confronts global issues, communicating widely to audiences beyond the field of contemporary art and demonstrating the importance of art as a creative agent for awareness and change.
Working in partnership since 2005, this husband and wife team create, produce and assemble their artworks and large installations together with a team of artists, architects, craftsmen and designers. Together they stage workshops, interventions, residencies and master classes that explore issues of community, migration, sustainable development and recycling among other themes. As heirs to the practice of social sculpture formulated by Joseph Beuys in the 1960s, their works are beguiling assemblages that are the platform for the preparation of food, mechanisms that actually purify water, and elements created for a 2007 expedition to Antarctica, which are part of an effort to amend the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Lucy and Jorge Orta’s work has been the focus of survey exhibitions in major museums around the world including: the Barbican Art Gallery (London, UK); Modern Art Museum (Paris, FR); Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, AU); Boijmans Museum Van Beuningen (Rotterdam, NL); and Hangar Bicocca (Milan, IT). FoodWaterLife is the first comprehensive exhibition of their work available to North American museums.
The exhibition is organized by the Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA and curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox (c2-curatorsquared).