In September 2020, Lucy and Jorge Orta will perform their 70x7 project The Meal together with 500 guests as follows: 7 guests, one from each community, will invite 7 other people, who will in turn invite 7 other people and so on, together with young volunteers from Europe and the Mediterranean. On the basis of the experiences and workshops of the preparatory phases, the artists will create the menu and the performance/scenery of the banquet with a special edition of Royal Limoges porcelain plates and table runners. This special setting will connect this banquet with a greater emotion: the feeling of being part of a strong and lasting creative movement.
The British-Argentinian artists Lucy + Jorge Orta’s collaborative practice focuses on social and ecological issues, employing a diversity of media — drawing, sculpture, installation, couture, painting, silkscreen, photography, video, light and performance — to create major bodies of work.
Amongst their most emblematic series are: Refuge Wear / Body Architecture — portable minimum habitats bridging architecture and dress; HortiRecycling / 70 x 7 The Meal — the local and global food chain and the ritual of community dining; Nexus Architecture — alternative modes of establishing the social link; The Gift — a metaphor for the heart and the biomedical ethics of organ donation; OrtaWater / Clouds — water scarcity and the problems arising from pollution and corporate control; Antarctica — the urgent need to consider the dignity of people suffering as a consequence of climate change; and Amazonia — the value of the natural environment to our daily lives and to our survival. In 2013 the artists developed the citizen commission Nouveaux commanditaires « Le Chemin des fées » to validate the natural and cultural heritage of the neglected river Huveaune with 7 sculptures along the river that flows through Marseille.