A BOLD AND URGENT MOVEMENT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
GUEST ARTISTS
ABOUT XAVIER CORTADA
Xavier Cortada has worked with groups globally to produce numerous collaborative art projects, including environmental installations at the North Pole and South Pole, 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 Taiwan and Holland.
Cortada has created art for the White House, CERN, the World Bank, the Museum of Florida History, the Florida Botanical Gardens, Miami City Hall, the Frost Art Museum, Miami-Dade County Hall, the Miami Science Museum, Port Everglades and the Florida Turnpike.
His work is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the NSU Museum of Art in Ft. Lauderdale, the Whatcom Museum, and the Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum.
Cortada’s studio is located at Pinecrest Gardens, where he serves as artist-in-residence. Since 2011, Cortada has based his socially-engaged art-science practice at Florida International University, serving in the FIU College of Arts, Sciences & Education (CASE) School of Environment, Arts and Society (SEAS), and the FIU College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts (CARTA).
Cortada, who was born in Albany, New York and grew up in Miami, holds degrees from the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Business and School of Law.
Learn more about Cortada at www.cortada.com.
Xavier’s Featured Projects for Miami Murals
Miami Mangrove Forest (2004): Xavier Cortada led 800 volunteers in creating the MIami Mangrove Forest to metaphorically reforest the I-95 underpasses in downtown Miami, Little Havana and Allapattah neighborhoods. Cortada’s pencil drawings of mangrove seedlings were used by volunteers to paint dozens of columns beneath I-95 and create the Miami Mangrove Forest. It was an important public art effort because it not only transformed a very public space with paint (in pre Wynwood Walls Miami), but the public art was the precursor for The Reclamation Project, an eco-art project that engaged hundreds of volunteers in reforesting the Biscayne Bay.
CURTIS PARK PLAZAS (2008): Placemaking was an important goal in this work. The plazas are part of a linear park where the art established places to sit, socialize and enjoy the natural character of the park.Created in a park near an old Seminole trading post on the Miami River in the neighborhood of Allapattah, one of the pieces recalls the Alligators (Allapattah) after which the place was named. Place names, and the Place captured by the act of naming, is a key to history and continuity.
MIami Mangrove Forest (2004): Xavier Cortada led 800 volunteers in creating the MIami Mangrove Forest to metaphorically reforest the I-95 underpasses in downtown Miami, Little Havana and Allapattah neighborhoods. Cortada’s pencil drawings of mangrove seedlings were used by volunteers to paint dozens of columns beneath I-95 and create the Miami Mangrove Forest. It was an important public art effort because it not only transformed a very public space with paint (in pre Wynwood Walls Miami), but the public art was the precursor for The Reclamation Project, an eco-art project that engaged hundreds of volunteers in reforesting the Biscayne Bay.
FOR MORE CORTADA PUBLIC ART: http://cortada.com/publicart