Socially Engaged Art Student Projects
Xavier Cortada serves as Professor of Practice at the University of Miami Art Department. Students in his Socially-Engaged Art course (ART315) created four social practice projects to address the coronavirus pandemic. Please click on each project to learn more about and participate in their work.
“Gracias por tu vida” (Thank you for your life) is a project for the Spanish community that is currently going through a rough situation where many people are losing their loved ones. To provide a community and space for all for commemoration and union, to rather focus on life and be thankful about it, it is an “oda a la vida” (ode to life).
The Freehand Project is a participatory social art project driven by South Florida community members to empower educators and families through gardening during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. In the first phase of the project, community members were engaged by sharing their knowledge on gardening in a collaborative, starter gardening guide.
The Relaxation Scores has the intention of providing self-performing Events that trigger The Relaxation Response through the Vagus nerve. The goal is to bond Eastern and Western mind-body medicine and provide self-therapy sessions that offer the possibility of reaching a more equanimous mind during distressing circumstances.
During this time of hardship, it is important to stay active and remember the things that make us happy. MOVE is a website that creates a platform for people to share and experience different songs, movies and shows. This site also shares DMT, Dance Movement Therapy and gives you some tools on how to start dancing and releasing excess tension and stress from home.
Special thanks to the following four University of Miami students for creating these engaged works: Mimi Martinez Laya (Gracias por tu vida), Genesis Cosme (The Freehand Project), Juanita Pineda Oviedo (The Relaxation Scores.), and Maia Marshall (MOVE).