ANTARCTICA

Xavier Cortada

 

Xavier Cortada, recipient of a 2006-2007 National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers fellowship, traveled to Antarctica to implement a series of installations that marked time using a moving ice sheet and made a point where the Earth's longitudes converge.   

 

While there, the Miami artist created "ice paintings" using sea ice, glacier and sediment samples provided to him by scientists working in Antarctica.  The artist titled the works on paper by randomly selecting the names of geographic features from a map of the continent that inspired their creation.

 

Cortada's work has been shown across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Antarctica and locally at the Miami Art Museum and Bass Museum of Art. The Miami artist has been commissioned to create art for the White House, the Florida Supreme Court, Miami City Hall, the Museum of Florida History and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Cortada's work is also in the permanent collection of The World Bank.

 

Cortada placed 24 shoes in a circle around the South Pole, each serving as a proxy for a person affected by global climate change in the world above. He placed the shoes inches apart along the respective longitudes where these individuals live, conceptually diminishing the distance between them.

 

Cortada planted 24 flags around the South Pole to warn of the imminent threat to Earth's biodiversity. Using melted sea ice and acrylic paint, he wrote the scientific name of an endangered species on each flag as well as the longitude of the habitat in which it struggles for survival.  

 

Cortada planted 51different colored flags on the moving ice sheet that covers the South Pole, each 10 meters apart and marking where the South Pole stood during each of the past 50 years (when humans first inhabited the South Pole).  Each flag also displayed the coordinates of the location on the world above where an important event that took place during that year .

 

Cortada planted an ice replica of a mangrove seedling on the moving ice sheet that blankets the South Pole.  Embedded in the ice, the seedling will move 10 meters a year in the direction of the Weddell Sea, 1400 km away.  In 150,000 years, the seedling will arrive at the coastline and theoretically set its roots.  

 

Cortada created "ice paintings" using sea ice, glacier and sediment samples provided to him by scientists working in Antarctica.  The artist titled the works on paper by randomly selecting the names of geographic features from a map of the continent that inspired their creation.

 

Shackleton (in the South Pole)

Cortada created a portrait of Sir Ernest Shackleton, who came within 97 miles of being the first to reach the South Pole.  The Antarctic explorer attempted to traverse the continent in a follow-up expedition, but wound up marooned for almost two years.  Cortada thought to honor Shackleton's heroism by permanently "placing him" at the South Pole, the place that so eluded him in life.