MOLI VIEW™

No, that's not Santa in the red jacket, silly. That's artist Xavier Cortada, who trekked down to the South Pole as a National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program recipient in the very chilly months of December 2006 and January 2007. A year later, his solo show South Pole Installations opened last night as part of the Art Basel madness in much warmer Miami.

Instead of stockings, Cortada brought 12 pairs of black shoes to the South Pole to represent the people living in each of the world's 24 time zones. The artist placed the shoes in a circle around the pole, where all the earth's longitudes meet. "Placing the shoes next to each other as a proxy for people across the globe, I aim to conceptually diminish the distance between them," he writes in his MOLI profile.

Cortada performed a ceremony in Antarctica. He stopped at the longitude corresponding to each time zone, then placed each shoe while reciting a quotation he had gathered from a resident of that zone about the impact of climate change on his or her life. Here are a few of the quotations with their corresponding longitudes:

0 Spain: "There may be a move of wineries into the Pyrenees in the future." — Xavier Sort, technical director of Miguel Torres Wineries

15E Switzerland: "Losses to insurers from environmental events have risen exponentially over the past 30 years, and are expected to rise even more rapidly still." — Pamela Heck, insurance industry expert

30E Zimbabwe: "We used to be able to grow everything we want but that has all changed." — Matsapi Nyathi, grandmother



Previous Page  1  2  Next Page