Lucy + Jorge Orta x Hum Media

Lucy + Jorge Orta x Hum Media

Exposition “My Center everywhere” | Stand 232

For the 2024 edition, Moderne Art Fair is renewing its confidence in HUM, the medium that advocates a new way of life embodied by inspiring and committed personalities. This year, HUM, in partnership with Moderne Art Fair, is inviting the artist duo Lucy + Jorge Orta, major players in the fields of art and ecology, to present an exhibition of their work entitled ‘My centre everywhere’. The title refers to the first line of the poem ‘Amazonia’, written by the British eco-poet Mario Petrucci using video footage recorded by the artists in the Amazon rainforest in 2009. From the top of the Andes, where glaciers are melting at a faster rate than ever before, to the Amazon basin, where mercury mining is destroying the river’s ecological balance, Petrucci poetically reconstructs this expedition by contrasting Gaia’s perspective with that of Man. Here we witness the dichotomy between ecological thinking and Progress. 

Lucy + Jorge Orta
Archipelago (Silk route South China Sea – Bay of Bengal), 2017-2018
Textiles sourced from South East Asia, China, Japan, glass beads, silk and embroidery on linen
150 x 150 cm
Courtesy Lucy + Jorge Orta

“MY CENTRE EVERYWHERE” EXHIBITION
Lucy + Jorge Orta are key players in the art-ecology movement. According to art critic and historian Paul Ardenne, ‘their creations, connected to reality, are contextual and constitute a critical, aesthetic and political response to a problematic human situation, in this sense humanising, softening and calming our relationship with the world’. (Courants verts, Creating for the environment, 2020).Lucy + Jorge Orta are key players in the art-ecology movement. According to art critic and historian Paul Ardenne, ‘their creations, connected to reality, are contextual and constitute a critical, aesthetic and political response to a problematic human situation, in this sense humanising, softening and calming our relationship with the world’. (Courants verts, Creating for the environment, 2020).

The increasing role given to the environment in their work since 2009 is part of a trajectory of social commitment that spans more than three decades. The artists see art as a ‘catalyst’ for solutions to contemporary challenges, both through the mediums they choose and the methods they employ to awaken and mobilise a wider audience. Their practice is based on social, scientific, cultural, economic and political realities, going beyond a simple aesthetic appreciation or a purely scientific observation of the world around us. As well as their traditional studio practice, Lucy + Jorge Orta borrow research methodologies from the sciences, taking their work into the field – from Antarctica to Amazonia in particular, in extreme climatic conditions. The artists collect and record scientific data to gain a better understanding of environmental issues. From their own experience, they have been able to observe the interrelationships described by ecologist John Muir in 1911: ‘When we try to isolate a single element, we find it linked to the rest of the universe’, what chemist James Lovelock later called the ‘Gaia hypothesis’ (1970). 

My centre everywhere presented at Moderne Art Fair features works from the Amazonia series, in a wide variety of media and formats that reflect both the imagination and the complexity of living things. We discover trees, plants, flowers, insects and birds, drawn, painted, embroidered and sculpted in textiles, while listening to the conversation between Gaia and Man, or to sound recordings of the Amazon rainforest. These works weave together a patchwork of visual and sensory information gathered by the artists, reflecting the complex nature of the biodiversity observed during their expeditions.

Courtesy Lucy + Jorge Orta

Lucy + Jorge Orta
Fabulae Naturae Derrame, 2022
Mixed media on canvas, certificate perpetual Amazonia
80 x 80 cm
Courtesy Lucy + Jorge Orta

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CONFERENCE WITH LUCY AND JORGE ORTA
Wednesday 16 October at 5pm | Moderne Art Fair stand 232
‘What is the role of artists in the face of the ecological crisis and what proposals can they put forward to raise awareness of the need to protect living things? Through the installation ‘My centre everywhere’, Lucy + Jorge Orta discuss the role of art in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.