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Art in Embassies
exhibits Cortada’s paintings in Africa
“The stunning mangroves of Xavier Cortada highlight the challenge of living in harmony with the natural world and protecting our environment.
This is as pressing a challenge for Equatorial Guinea – which has its own threatened mangroves and unique biodiversity – as it is for the United States.”
Ambassador Alberto Fernandez
Malabo, Equatorial Guinea
Click here for more
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Paintings, prints on permanent display at new UM Alumni Center
Five works by University of Miami alumnus Xavier Cortada (BA 1986,
MPA 1991, JD 1991) are on permanent exhibit at the newly inaugurated
University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, FL.
Three of Cortada’s colorful mangrove paintings and edition 1 (of 5) of the artist’s signed, numbered limited edition Longitudinal Installation prints (of both the North Pole and South Pole work) flank the hallway leading to the center’s first floor conference room. |
Coral eco-art at Hawaii’s Bishop Museum
In the past few months, museum educators at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu have begun implementing Xavier Cortada’s “Coral Eco-art Project” to help protect’s Hawaii’s coral reefs.
The
project engages families across the Hawaiian islands in crafting
eco-actions that help reduce green house gases and reduce ocean
acidification that are harmful to Hawaii’s coral reefs.
Cortada’s work at the Bishop Museum was sponsored by ECHO (Education through Cultural and Historic Organizations)
and the Peabody Essex Museum. During March 2010, Cortada was aritst in
residence at the Bishop Museum, visited its collections and worked with
museum educators and with University of Hawaii researchers to develop the participatory eco-art project.
The
Bishop Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop as a
memorial to his wife, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct
descendant of King Kamehameha I. The Bishop Museum’s mission is to
study, preserve and tell the stories of the cultures and natural
history of Hawai’i and the Pacific. It works closely with teachers,
school children, and lifelong learners to offer meaningful educational
programs, hosting more than 325,000 children, families, and
out-of-state visitors annually.
Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice Street
Honolulu, Hawai’i
www.bishopmuseum.org
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Biology Department appointment
On
November 10th, 2010, the faculty of the University of Miami Department
of Biology voted to extend artist Xavier Cortada the title of Adjunct Lecturer of the Department of Biology. |
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Silver Knight Alumni Legacy Network
On November 17th, 2010, Cortada was elected to serve as Vice Chair of the Silver Knight Alumni Legacy Network.
The
Silver Knight Alumni Legacy Network is a forum created to engage past,
present and future Silver Knight honorees, the best and brightest of
Miami’s outstanding high school seniors, to continue their pursuit of
excellence, to enhance our community through civic engagement, to work
together to contribute through community service and to inspire
future award winners.
Cortada,
a Miami Herald Silver Knight Award winner from Miami Senior High
School in 1982, will be inducted with the other officers — including
attorneys Rafael Penalver (Vice Chair) and Jimmy Morales (Chair) —
during a ceremony in the new Downtown offices Greenberg Traurig on
December 21st, 2010. More information about the group at www.silverknightalumni.com
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MOCA Leadership Circle
Cortada
joined the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Leadership Circle.
Membership in the Leadership Circle is a yearly commitment and involves
attending dynamic lectures, outings and functions tailored to engage
future advocates for contemporary art and philanthropy. To learn more
about MOCA visit www.mocanomi.org
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Sequentia
Frost Art Museum
Florida International University
10975 SW 17th Street
Miami, Florida 33199
October 13th, 2010 – January 2nd, 2011
Xavier Cortada‘s
solo exhibit at the Frost Art Museum explores the sequence of events
that makes up life on the planet from the molecular to the monumental.
The
title of the exhibit also references a series of actions Cortada set
in motion to create of a unique strand of DNA. This included a participatory installation on the museum wall where 400 visitors randomly generated a genetic sequence. Participants replaced one of 400 pieces of a large scale work on paper (representing a DNA molecule) with a card depicting one of Cortada’s four nucleotide paintings.
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| above: screen grabs from opening night performance courtesy of wetheat.tv |
Random Sequence similar to human DNA
During his November 10th lecture at the Frost Art Museum, Xavier Cortada joined FIU’s Dr. Kalai Mathee in announcing that the genetic sequence randomly generated by 400 visitors to his Sequentia museum exhibit a few weeks earlier was similar to a portion of human Chromosome 3 which encodes for proteins that direct the navigation of axons in human neurons.
Hours
earlier, Cortada worked in Dr. Mathee’s laboratory in the FIU College
of Medicine to synthesize the 400-nucleotide DNA molecule. He named it “Sequentia.”
For more information please visit
http://www.xaviercortada.com/event/sequentia
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| Xavier Cortada, “(The Four Nucleotides:) Adenine,” acrylic on canvas, 60″ x 72″, 2010. |
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During the SCOPE Miami art fair, Hardcore Art Contemporary Space will exhibit Xavier Cortada’s “80.15 W” carbon paper drawings and prints in their booth: Booth C42. Titled for Biscayne Bay’s longitude, the “80.15 W” series features the 17 threatened and endangered species that call Biscayne National Park home.
SCOPE Miami
Wynwood Gallery Arts District
3055 North Miami Avenue (Booth C42)| Miami, Florida 33127
FirstView
Tuesday, November 30 | 3pm-9pm
Free for VIPs or $100 donation at the door benefiting the SCOPE Foundation
General Admission Fair Hours
Wednesday | December 1 | 11am-6pm
Thursday-Saturday | December 2-4 | 11-7pm
Sunday | December 5 | 11am-6pm
For more information please visit
www.xaviercortada.com/event/scope
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Life Wall
Art Center South Florida features Xavier Cortada’s “Endangered World: Life Wall“, an eco-art project he launched in 2009 at a Neolithic gravesite/museum in Holland.
The installation depicts participants’ online contributions to the participatory project*: On a found stone, participants paint the longitude of the animal they’ve
adopted. They keep their marked stone in a conspicuous place (e.g.,
as a paperweight on a desk) to remind them daily of the sustainable practice they’ve promised to engage in support of their endangererd animal.
Drawings
Upstairs in his studio (#201), Cortada is showing 180 pencil drawings
of endangered animals living in the Eastern Hemisphere. The work is
based on the 360 endangered animals originally featured in the artist’s
2008 North Pole Installation, in the 2009 Life Wall in Holland, and in the 2010 mile-long installation at Biscayne National Park in Miami.
Art Center South Florida
924 Lincoln Road
Entrance Gallery and Studio 201
Miami Beach, Florida 33139
On exhibit through January 10, 2011
*Special thanks to Gretchen Scharnagl and Artistic Expression in a
Global Society, a foundational global learning course she co-teaches at
Florida International University.
For more information please visit
www.xaviercortada.com/event/endangered
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90 N / 90 S
North Pole & South Pole Installations
at Miami Science Museum
Miami based artist Xavier Cortada created art installations at the Earth’s poles to generate awareness about global climate change:
In 2007, as an NSF (National Science Foundation) Antarctic Artists & Writers Program grantee, the artist used the moving ice sheet beneath the South Pole as an instrument to mark time; the art piece will be completed in 150,000 years.
In 2008, as an NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) sponsored artist, he planted a green flag at North Pole to reclaim it for nature and launch a participatory eco-art project to help reforest the world below.
Replicas and artifacts from these installations, as well as other artworks, are on exhibit at the Miami Science Museum, 3280 South Miami Avenue, Miami, FL through May 31, 2011.
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 Five years ago Miami artist Xavier Cortada brought awareness to the importance of mangroves by launching the Reclamation Project at the Bass Museum of Art.
Annually,
the eco-art project’s volunteers collect mangrove propagules, grow
them for several months inside clear cups hanging on Lincoln Road store
fronts (earlier site of a mangrove forest) and the Miami Science Museum, and then plant the seedlings nearby on Biscayne Bay.
To celebrate eight acres of coastal reforestation to date, Cortada’s mangrove paintings will on exhibit at two local venues during the next two months. Proceeds from sales of the paintings will benefit several charities (see links below).
Arts for a Better World
Wynwood Arts District
November 30th through December 5th.2010
Union Credit Bank reception for the Reclamation Project
Brickell Financial District
Opening reception: December 13th at 5:30 pm
Several paintings from Cortada’s mangrove series hang permanently in the newly inaugurated University of Miami Alumni Center; others are on loan to the residence of the US Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea as part of the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program.
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The Colloquium Series of the
Center for Migration and Development
presents
“An Artist’s Perspective on Race and Ethnicity:
The Ancestral Journeys Project”
a lecture by
Xavier Cortada
on
December 16th, 2010 at noon*
at
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Through his multi-year “Ancestral Journeys” project, Xavier Cortada explores
the
complex relationship between human genetics, identity and history,
particularly human migration from its origins in East Africa.
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Visit artist’s studio:
Xavier Cortada studio
924 Lincoln Road
Studio 201
Miami Beach, FL 33139
305-858-1323
For more information please visit
www.cortada.com
Miami
artist Xavier Cortada created art installations at the North Pole and
South Pole to address environmental concerns at every point in between.
He’s been commissioned to create art for the White House, the World
Bank, Miami City Hall, Miami-Dade County Hall, Florida Botanical
Gardens, the Miami Art Museum, Museum of Florida History, Miami Science
Museum and the Frost Art Museum. Cortada has also developed numerous
collaborative art projects globally, including peace murals in Cyprus
and Northern Ireland, child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama, AIDS
murals in Switzerland and South Africa, and eco-art projects in Holland,
Hawaii and Latvia.
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