About

Artist Xavier Cortada’s Who is this Child? utilizes appropriated language/iconography to shed light on Florida’s direct file law.  Since 1978, the Florida legal statute allows adolescents to be tried as adults, the jurisdiction of the law expanding to include even younger children in the 1990’s (“F.S. 985.557”).  Lawmakers used coded language (e.g.,  “superpredators”) to justify their decision. However, not only being an issue of human rights, the statute disproportionately affects the youth of minority communities, contextually significant to Cortada’s work. By asking the viewer “Who is this child?” in regard to a juvenile being tried as an adult, the artist emphasizes the reality that this “predator” is just a kid. 

Who is this Child? exists as a bronze relief of an open book, the title of the work a reference to both the words inscribed upon the metal pages as well acting as a call toward empathy. The material quality of bronze contains conceptual resonance, upon its worn surface an implication of a forgotten past buried underneath the present. This is seen through the metal’s strong historical significance, an entire age of humanity having been named the bronze age, as well as the perception of durability; a relic exudes a status of cultural significance in the face of times past. This stands in stark contrast to other themes inherent to the work, such as that of the ephemerality and innocence of adolescence. 

Ultimately, the bronze is a reminder of what has been lost as well as what is to come; Who is this Child? presents the troubled dichotomy that exists between adolescence and adulthood for many at-risk youths in Miami.