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  1. Miami artist Cortada featured at Governor's Mansion

    05.Oct.07, 23:47 EDT
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    Miami artist Cortada featured at Governor's Mansion

    The Miami Herald
    September 21, 2007

    By MARC CAPUTO, mcaputo@miamiherald.com

    CortadaThe staid and somewhat old Governor's Mansion got a little Picasso-like flavor now that two new paintings from Miami artist Xavier Cortada are hanging in the entrance hall in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.


    Cortada, the son of exiles from Havana and a little fishing village called Nuevitas, said Friday that the two paintings named Conquistadores (''Explorers'') and Raíces (''Roots'') symbolize the struggles Hispanics have faced and overcome in coming to the state.


    ''The hardship those conquistadores and settlers felt is the same hardship many Hispanics experience today,'' Cortada said, describing his work as expressionist but influenced by Cuban Modernist brush strokes taught to him by his father and uncle.


    ``I want Honduran kids living in Little Havana to know that they're part of a history that's more than 500 years old.''


    Cortada, 43 and a Democrat, said he wasn't just honored that Republican Gov. Charlie Crist tapped him to be the featured artist for Hispanic Heritage month, he saluted the Republican governor's ''tremendous leadership'' for holding a global-warming summit and putting the issue in the minds of Florida's private citizens and politicians. The issue is dear to Cortada who has produced a series of ''ice paintings'' to raise awareness about the threat of climate change.


    Cortada first came to Crist's attention through former Gov. Jeb Bush, who featured the artist in 2003.


    Crist, who has featured the paintings of the African-American Highwaymen in the mansion as well, introduced Cortada as someone willing ''to share his gift from God.'' One of the paintings, Conquistadores, is to be sold for an undisclosed price to Washington Mutual, which then plans to donate the painting to the state. The other, Raíces, Cortada is loaning to Florida for a decade.


    Both paintings heavily feature intertwining mangroves, with Conquistadores featuring a forbidding impasse of trees and a crocodile and Raíces a family in a welcoming forest with a pelican. Cortada said it reflects his own family's experience in which his mother and father had the help of government and churches.


    ''Without them,'' he said, "my family would have been with the crocodiles, not with the pelicans.''

  2. A Colorful Palette, an Open Canvas, 40 Voices on Florida’s Future

    13.Apr.07, 18:02 EDT
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    A Colorful Palette, an Open Canvas, 40 Voices on Florida’s Future --(Special 40th Anniversary Issue), Florida Trend, Tampa, Florida (state-wide circulation), September 1998. As Florida turns from being a sleepy Southern state into a metropolis, and as immigration and the racism involved in that begins to evaporate through assimilation, the tension and the passion and the struggle and the angst create opportunities for artists to express themselves. It’s Florida’s turn to become a cultural state. Florida is still a very young state and the money we have is very young money. People are still trying to figure out what to do with that money and artists are trying to figure out how to get their first show in New York City or Paris. But that’s changing. The new kid on the block, the new empire, is Miami. I look at Miami the way I look at Italy at the beginning of the Renaissance.

  3. Planting for Life

    13.Apr.07, 18:01 EDT
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    Planting for Life CultureSurge - Artburst Written by Anne Tschida category305.com http://www.category305.com/artburst/xavier-cortadas-reclaimation.php Thursday, 09 November 2006 Xavier Cortada's been up to some interesting social actions lately. First off, at the Science Museum (which sometimes falls under the arts radar, and it shouldn't), the Cubamian with the big heart has a quirky installation commemorating, of all things, 50 years of a U.S. presence on the South Pole. "The Markers" is a set of 50 differently colored flags, each one relating to an important event of every year of the last half century. Actually, according to the artist, the flags "mark the passage of time by exploring important events that have moved the world forward." "Move" is the critical word here, as Cortada is going to take the markers in January to …. the South Pole. He'll place them exactly where the Pole stood each year—it moves 9.9 meters annually, in the same direction. That's life on a glacier. His flags will note things such as Sputnik's orbit of the earth (1957); the election of the first woman to lead the world's biggest democracy – Indira Gandhi (1966); the discovery of our earliest ancestor, Lucy (1974); the year Prozac was put on the market (1987); and the year Spain banned all discrimination based on sexual orientation (2005). And how can the tropical trooper afford such an icy excursion? As an award recipient of the — yes you're reading this right — National Science Foundation Antarctic Artist and Writer Program. [In conjunction with this show, the Science Museum is showing photography from the region, including awe-inspiring images of the otherworldly landscape and the creatures that inhabit it – penguins and U.S. scientists both.] Back on our peninsula, Cortada is highlighting more native movement, with his "Reclamation Project." He is "planting" mangrove shoots, in clear cups with water, all over South Beach in a symbolic effort to take the concrete land back to its original state. (It's his Art Basel project.) As Cortada relates, a 1915 photograph was one inspiration, showing as it did Miami Beach founder Carl Fisher posing with Rosie the Elephant, clearing the "swamps" to pave the way for Lincoln Road. Mangrove forests helped keep the sandy earth in place, as well as sustain a healthy eco-system, and he wants his project "to remind us we must learn to coexist with nature in our urban settings, instead of relegating it to nature preserves." Then he will take this show on the road. The 2,600 mangrove seedlings, through an effort of an all-volunteer eco-army, will be shipped over to Key Biscayne starting mid-December and really planted as part of a reforestation plan. Behind this excursion are Citizens for a Better Florida and DERM, among others. Wanna do some planting? Contact coordinator@reclamationproject.net "The Markers" will be planted at the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium through Dec. 11, 3280 South Miami Ave., Miami. "The Reclamation Project" will be planted around South Beach from mid-November through Dec. 17.

  4. Florida's 2006 Heritage Month

    13.Apr.07, 14:44 EDT
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    Xavier Cortada: Florida's 2006 Heritage Month, Florida History & the Arts Magazine, Winter 2006. Miami artist Xavier Cortada sees the past in every concrete-and-steel vision of the future. As an unprecedented building boom continues to remake his city, he walks familiar paths and increasingly is left with the sense of being lost. As landmarks vanish and slick new buildings loom, Cortada focuses on what used to be. "When you walk by a new building today you can't imagine that in 1914 there was a wooden shack there. And much less, that 20 years before there was a mangrove forest. We get stuck in visual constructions. We are so focused on the here and now and what looks to be concrete that we forget that history makes the concrete fluid." Through his art, Cortada attempts to reclaim Florida's fertile past. The concrete columns that hold up I-95 through downtown Miami now bear his mark: in 2004, he painted colorful mangrove seedlings on columns across four neighborhoods, a metaphoric re-foresting and an invitation to locals to celebrate the cultural riches that made Miami. "I hope my art helps people think about what was here before, what immigrant groups came here, what kinds of struggles the people had to go through to get us to where we are. Context is what allows us to go forward in a sensitive and proactive way. To grow and to not take a look back is what is problematic." He has elaborated on the mangrove metaphor in murals he created for Miami City Hall and the Miami-Dade County Commission Chambers. Cortada uses mangroves to portray the journey and interconnectedness of Floridians. "We all come from different places to make Miami our home, much like a mangrove seedling that washes up on a Florida sandbar sets roots. Cortada, who was born in Albany, New York and grew up in Miami, has exhibited his work in museums, galleries and cultural venues around the world. He has created art for the White House, the World Bank, the Miami Art Museum, the Miami-Dade Juvenile Courthouse and the Miami Children's Museum. Cortada is currently working on a painting for the Old Capitol Building in Tallahassee. He was selected to produce the painting which will become the 2006 Florida Heritage Month poster, distributed to schools, museums, libraries, local arts agencies, and state service organizations throughout the state. Floridians and visitors can see other Cortada work throughout the state. A series of paintings depicting landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases originating in Florida are on long-term loan to the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee. And, two paintings hang in Tallahassee's Museum of Florida History. They were created to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month 2003, when Governor Bush unveiled the mangrove-themed paintings, one about Ponce de Leon's 1513 landing on Florida shores and the other about recent arrivals who came by raft. In March 2005, a solo exhibit on mangroves opened at the capitol's penthouse gallery and is now touring the state. It will be seen at the Artel Gallery in Pensacola on February 2006. Cortada used mangroves in his portrait of Florida's first catholic bishop, Augustin Verot. The painting was transformed into a 16-foot glass mosaic that hangs in the courtyard of Bishop Verot High School in Fort Myers. Cortada is also well-known for his collaborative public art. Major projects include International AIDS Conference murals in Switzerland and South Africa, peace murals in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, and child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama. Corporations such as Nike, Heineken and Hershey's have commissioned his art. Publishers like McDougal and Random House have featured it in school textbooks. Cortada holds degrees from the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Business and School of Law.

  5. Pretty as a Picture

    13.Apr.07, 14:43 EDT
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    Pretty as a Picture Artist Xavier Cortada is bringing back the mangroves by Vanessa Garcia The New Times, Miami, FL Article Published Dec 7, 2006 Ever wonder about those funny-looking, colorful creatures painted on the concrete posts that shoulder I-395 and I-95 through downtown Miami? Well, wonder no more: They're mangrove seedlings. In 2004 artist Xavier Cortada led volunteers from Hands on Miami in painting them on more than 30 columns. The fact that we no longer recognize those "creatures" is precisely Cortada's point. The paintings were supposed to be a metaphorical reforestation of the area, which teemed with the trees a century ago, recalling a time before the concrete was poured. This year Cortada launched the Reclamation Project, which runs through the conclusion of Art Basel. The idea: to make the metaphorical downtown reforestation a literal one on Miami Beach. Beginning with an exhibit at the Bass Museum of Art this past April 22 (Earth Day), the first phase of the project delivered mangrove seedlings throughout Miami Beach businesses. The 2500 adopted seedlings will be displayed in storefronts during Basel. This coming January 20, the seedlings will be collected at Books & Books on Lincoln Road and used to reforest a portion of Key Biscayne and South Biscayne Bay. A week later, volunteers will meet at Bear Cut Preserve in Key Biscayne to plant them. A full-moon reception to thank the volunteers will close the project February 3 at the Cape Florida Lighthouse in Key Biscayne. "The sad thing," says Cortada, "is that when we went looking for a place to plant them on Miami Beach, we couldn't find a single place where the seawalls hadn't been barricaded." However, the reclamation team is working to prepare Pine Tree Park's shoreline so that a Miami Beach reforestation can occur next year, just in time for Basel 2007.

  6. Bold as Ice

    13.Apr.07, 14:43 EDT
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    Bold as Ice Miami artist Xavier Cortada finds fresh air at the South Pole By Carlos Suarez De Jesus Published: March 29, 2007 in the Miami New Times During a recent visit to Kunsthaus Miami, Xavier Cortada was putting the finishing touches on his show while ruminating on the "transformative effects" of his visit to the South Pole. "Antarctica," his solo exhibit, features videos and photographs accompanied by wall text documenting a handful of installations he created as part of a two-week National Science Foundation Antarctica Artists and Writers Program residency he completed this past December and January. But it's his remarkable series of pristinely displayed "ice paintings" that steal the thunder here. "I conceptualized all the installations in Miami as part of the proposal for my project," Cortada explains of his brainy, eco-based works at the South Pole. "I also packed my canvases, brushes, and paints before the trip, not knowing what to expect, but ended up making these ice paintings of and about Antarctica instead." While at McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Cortada worked in a lab alongside biologists, geologists, oceanographers, physicists, and other researchers studying the continent. "It was incredible," Cortada says. "A scientist working next to me was researching how single-cell algae would cluster to avoid being eaten, while another was examining the effects of temperature change on life in the Dry Valley, Antarctica's most arid region." Inspired by his labmates, he asked the researchers to provide him with ice core samples from their investigations and began experimenting with them to create purely abstract, nine-by-twelve-inch works. "In part it was accidental," he says. "The vast solitude and remoteness of the place added to the process." Those familiar with Cortada's public murals and expressionistic figurative paintings, notable for their lush tropical palette, will be pleasantly knocked back by the radical departure. The subtle, mixed-media works on paper, bleeding cool monochromatic tones, look like watercolors from a distance. On closer inspection the works convey a sense of Antarctica's flowing ice streams, vast ice sheets, imposing mountain regions, and isolated frozen deserts, as if captured from above by a satellite's lens. They are divided into two series, in which Cortada uses sediment from Antarctica's Dry Valley, ice from the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, and sea ice from Antarctica's Ross Sea given to him by scientists. The artist used the drilled ice core samples as brushes, dipping them into acrylic paints before applying them to paper, often letting the ice melt and pool, while the ancient sediment contained within adhered to the surface. He later titled the works by randomly selecting the names of geographic locations such as bays, glaciers, and coastlines taken from a map of the continent (which in turn are often named after explorers). Isolated on a wall near the entrance of the gallery, an arrangement of four works from Cortada's "Antarctic Sea Ice Series" seems alchemical in nature. It's of little wonder that the delightfully atmospheric pieces pack such a primeval wallop, given the fact that they are encrusted with thousands of years of history. In works like porpoise, one can detect how the artist used the ice samples to sponge up rich blue, green, and lavender hues he then applied to the surface in swirls, evoking an ice cap from a bird's-eye view. Scratchy layers of sediment and patches of inky black pools add to its depth and texture. Across from it, prydz exudes a scabbier vibe, its background soaked in darker tones and caked in grit throughout. Against this sooty wash the artist seems to have placed a chunk of sea ice, slathered in turquoise, leaving it to melt until the piece resembled a frosty Rorschach test. Other pieces, like bellinghausen and weddell, telegraph how the artist became looser in his approach to experimentation. The first shows how he used two pieces of ice, dipped in a deep purple tone, placing them inches apart on the paper until the organic-shape meltdowns took on the look of twin iodine spills. The other piece, brushed across horizontally with multiple washes of icy blue and generously worked over with sediment streaks, shows how the artist lifted color-saturated fragments of ice off the paper, allowing them to drip onto the surface like runny popsicles. A mood-ringlike splotch in this work is playfully surrounded by drip splatters that look like a band of amoebas. Unfortunately the photographs documenting the meatier work Cortada executed during his visit to the South Pole nearly get lost in the shuffle. Exhibited on a wall at the rear of the gallery, they depict the projects that earned him his visit to Antarctica, complemented by elaborate wall texts describing their process. This past January 4, on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the South Pole station, Cortada created the Markers, planting 51 different colored flags along a 500-meter stretch of the moving ice sheet covering the Pole. He placed each flag ten meters apart, approximating the location where the shifting geographic South Pole stood during each of the past 50 years. Each of the flags also displays the coordinates of an event Cortada believes "moved the world forward": Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit Earth in 1957; the Civil Rights march on Washington in 1963; the United Nations' First World Conference on Women in 1975; the invention of Prozac in 1987; the end of apartheid in South Africa and Mandela's election in 1994; and the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. In Longitudinal Installation the artist placed twelve identical pairs of black leather shoes, purchased from a Liberty City wholesale outlet, in a circle around the South Pole. The text accompanying the photo notes that the shoes served as a proxy for a person affected by global climate changes in the world above, and were placed inches apart along the corresponding longitudes where those individuals live. For The 150,000-Year Journey, Cortada embedded a replica of a mangrove seedling in the three-kilometer-thick glacial ice sheet blanketing the Pole. The Cuban-American artist has adopted the mangrove seedling as a metaphor to address the immigrant journey — what he refers to as "the displacement, the solitude, the struggle to simply integrate oneself into society." As the seedling begins it 150,000-year trek in the direction of the Weddell Sea, 1400 kilometers away, Cortada questions how humanity and the earth might evolve in the time it will theoretically take for the art piece's completion. The short video piece captures Cortada in the process of planting his flags, and the harsh subzero conditions he endured. All of his installations were created on the same day, documented, then taken down.