Lucy+Jorge Orta

Lucy Orta b. 1966, Sutton Coldfield, United Kingdom, lives and works in Paris and Boissy-le-Châtel France; Jorge Orta b. 1953, Rosario, Argentina, lives and works in Paris and Boissy-le-Châtel, France

NEXUS ARCHITECTURE X 50 INTERVENTION KOLN; 2001; Original Lamda colour photograph, laminated on Dibon; 150 x 120cm

110 hand silkscreen printed suits in aluminum coated polyamide, zippers

Building on work of the progenitor of social sculpture, Joseph Beuys, Jorge+Lucy Orta, have, in their collaborative practice over the last quarter century, addressed the most pressing concerns that threaten the well-being, even the very existence of humans and this planet on which we find ourselves. Lucy’s journey began in the world of Parisian fashion, but instead of heading to the runway, she went into the streets, where the plight of the homeless and the hungry precipitated prodigious bodies of work. Garments that served as shelters eventually developed into what she called “collective wear,” hooded suits that attached via tubes to form processions, or lattices, as we see here. The striking and stunning sight of a public place activated by such a construction of connected individuals was a clarion call, both to herald our collective social responsibility and a call to action for reform and amelioration of conditions. This performative wear, created over 20 years ago, is, in a sense, the unwitting antecedent to all the garments in this presentation, Design by Distance. Our interconnectedness and our co-dependence, for better or worse, is expressed in the joining together of masses of people. We need each other for survival, and yet with the appearance of the Covid pandemic, we witness proximity resulting in broad contagion. Together, a route out of this situation is being forged with the development of vaccines at unprecedented speeds and by changing social norms; and yet, without the “social distance” this grid of connected garments insists upon, our health is threatened. The relevance today of this work, that begin in the 1990s, speaks to its multivalence.