Photo: Studio Orta
Lucy Orta was trained as a fashion designer and began working as an artist in the beginning of the 1990’s to create what she called “architectures with soul”. These objects “respond to a critical and constructive gaze on the most sensitive areas of society, evoking the need for change, poetically prefiguring reality and suggesting alternative life styles.” Her Refuge Wear (1992-1998) and Body Architecture (1994-1998)–tents that become overcoats, backpacks that become sleeping bags or tents–are prototype structures, light and autonomous for emergency “situations”. Nexus Architecture (1994-2002), in which a variable number of people wear suits connected to each other, create modular and collective structures that put into forms her concept of “Social Link”.
In 1991 Orta established the Paris-based Studio-Orta, which operates as a research and development studio for artworks and limited editions by Lucy and Jorge Orta, and as an administrative bureau for their exhibitions, collaborations, and commissions. Studio-Orta’s team of curators, designers, architects, engineers, musicians, artisans, fabricators, production assistants and technicians employ a range of techniques from object making, couture, painting, printing, light projections, performances, public events and communications strategies to investigate crucial themes of the world today: the community and the social link, dwelling and habitat, nomadism and mobility, sustainable development, ecology and recycling.
Parallel and feeding into her artistic practice Orta also holds the first Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Fashion at London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London). She also founded the Master in Industrial Design Man and Humanity at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (2002), to stimulate socially driven and sustainable design solutions in the form of alternative systems and products.
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Lucy Orta |
Lucy Orta |
Lucy Orta |
Lucy & Jorge Orta |
Lucy & Jorge Orta |
Lucy Orta |
Symposium C6 runs concurrent with 