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Cortada reinvents style
during Antarctic visit:
Art brings awareness to environmental issues
By Peter Rejcek
Published in the Antarctic Sun
January 21, 2007
MIAMI ARTIST Xavier Cortada came to Antarctica to spread the
word about climate change and to educate the public in the
little-known scientific and historic facts about the seventh
continent. But he didn’t quite expect for his brief journey
here to change his own artistic style so radically.
The
artist’s traditional work pulses with tropical colors, as if
living jungle had flung itself onto canvas to be recast in
Technicolor wonder. A mangrove seedling seems to serve as his
most holy symbol, representing the roots of community in the
way that the seed, when it washes up on a sandbar, grows and
creates a new ecosystem.
Yet, in the scores of small watercolor paintings spread around a
laboratory room in McMurdo Station’s main science building,
Cortada’s bold colors, his familiar symbols and splashes of
style, are missing. The cool blue colors of glacier ice swirl
in abstract shapes on 8-by-11 papers, peppered with texture
thanks to soil samples from the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Boxes of paint tubes and bottles will return with him to Miami
unused. Blank canvas sits in a nearby chair, folded like bed
sheets.
“Instead of going home with drawings of icebreakers and
mountaintops, I’m going home with abstract pieces created from
samples of Antarctica, and I think that’s good, that’s the
exploration and resonance it was created from,” said Cortada,
his round face beaded a bit with sweat from the overheated
room. He was trying to dry the paintings, still wet from the
sea ice that he had used both as a watery base for his paints
and as a brush, before flying north the next day.
“I’ve never been so prolific and inspired as I’ve been here,” he
added. “It’s been the ultimate artist residency.”
It was also a fast-paced residency under the National Science
Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Cortada
churned out a half-dozen pre-planned projects in just two
weeks, including several temporary installation pieces at the
South Pole. He flew there for a one-day mad scramble, though
at one point weather threatened to cancel the venture
altogether.
But a window opened in the weather on Jan. 4 – 50 years to the day
when construction of the first U.S. South Pole station was
completed – and he and his partner Juan Carlos Espinosa, a
musician and sound artist, reached 90 degrees south.
Cortada called one temporary exhibit Longitudinal
Installation. It involved placing 12 pairs of nondescript
black shoes around the ceremonial South Pole, which resembles
a barbershop pole topped with a mirrored orb like the tip of
some magician’s wand. Inside the sole of all 24 shoes, he had
painted degrees of longitude, so that each shoe would
represent 15 degrees of distance. At the Pole, where the world
converges, they conceptually come together in a tight circle.
He chose 24 news items from around the world that would roughly
correspond to the longitudinal location of each piece of
footwear. Each clip was a voice in the global wilderness, a
warning about the impacts of environmental degradation. He
read each news story aloud. Espinosa recorded the performance,
which took place in temperatures that dipped to about negative
17 degrees Fahrenheit.
For example, one news item from Colorado at 105 degrees west said,
“In Colorado, climate change means less snow, less water, more
wildfires, less biodiversity and less economic opportunity, as
there is less water available for development.”
“I wanted to make the South Pole this global campfire where people
would come and talk,” Cortada explained. “The South Pole is
where all these longitudes converge … by literally putting
these people’s voices inches apart from one another from where
they stand on the world at the South Pole, I conceptually
diminish the distance, so we can empathize and care more.”
The next project was somewhat similar, but Cortada expanded the
notion of how human-induced climate change affects not just
people but also other species. He painted 24 flags with
degrees of longitude and the scientific names of 24 endangered
or threatened animals.
Both installations will be reproduced for a June exhibit in Oslo,
Norway, for United Nations World Environment Day 2007, in a
show the Natural World Museum is producing in partnership
with the United Nations Environment Program. Cortada has
created works for numerous public institutions, including the
White House, the World Bank, the Florida capitol, the Florida
Supreme Court and the Miami Art Museum.
Not all of the Antarctic projects revolved around the theme of
climate change and global warming. A different concept played
with time. Cortada poured South Pole water into the mold of a
mangrove seedling to create an ice counterpart to one of his
familiar symbols. He then buried the inorganic seed at the
geographic Pole, which rests on a moving ice sheet. In about
150,000 years, Cortada said, that seed would reach the Weddell
Sea.
Cortada said the piece reminds people that the immediacy of
political or societal concerns is far less important than we
might think. “We forget that we’re just a small passing moment
in a broad spectrum of time.”
He stretched out a shorter timeline in Markers. For this
installation, Cortada dug 50 holes to plant flags that
correspond with the 50 spots where the geographic marker has
stood over the last half-century. The ice sheet moves about 30
feet, or 10 meters, each year and the marker is relocated on
New Year’s Day. Cortada chose pivotal, inspiring moments from
history to represent each year. For instance, the marker for
1989 represents the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This geological timepiece was half a kilometer long. “I love the
idea of a moving ice sheet to explain Antarctica,” Cortada
said.
The prolific artist didn’t stop with these one-hit wonders designed
to shock the mind off its normal line of thinking. He also
painted a portrait of Antarctic hero and explorer Ernest
Shackleton while he was in McMurdo and presented the painting
to the South Pole station management during his brief visit.
“Shackleton to me is the epitome of the Antarctic hero,” Cortada
said. “He opened up this continent to us.”
Shackleton failed to reach the Pole in life. Cortada imbued his
painting of the famed British explorer with some unusual
elements for his long overdue arrival. He used GIS maps of the
continent that traced Shackleton’s various expeditions. He
also overlaid historical photos for the portrait before
painting it. The materials used in the paint included glacial
ice, dirt from the Dry Valleys and even crushed crystals from
Mount Erebus.
“I think the painting is very significant,” said Jerry Marty, the
National Science Foundation representative at South Pole.
“Shackleton’s Antarctica expeditions and his leadership
pioneered – almost 100 years later – a continent being used
for scientific research, without ownership, and for peaceful
purposes.
“The temporary installations of climate change and notions of
geologic timeline were very powerful,” he added.
Antarctica exerted its own power on Cortada, particularly for his
last project, an 8-by-4-foot painting that he donated to the
McMurdo community. The second-generation Cuban-American artist
combined his traditional style with his emerging intuition for
abstract images. He had solicited comments from people at
McMurdo’s local art show for the piece. The question: why had
they come to Antarctica?
Participants wrote their answers on note cards, which he adhered to
the borders of the canvas, a GIS map of the Ross Island
region. Jess Walker, a GIS analyst at McMurdo who creates the
maps for the U.S. Antarctic Program, worked with Cortada on
finding the right maps for his projects.
“I think there’s a lot about a map that lends itself to artistry,”
Walker said. “We spent quite a bit of time looking at maps.”
The Ross Island map particularly appealed to Cortada because of a
whimsical swirl on the left side of the digitally created
image, the turning basin created by the annual icebreaker in
the sea ice.
“It’s like a doodle on the water,” he exclaimed, apparently
delighted by the playful imagery the shape lent to the overall
image. Ross Island, where United States and New Zealand
science stations sit, disappeared under a firework display of
color created by Cortada’s brush. Over the note cards, he
wrote in all of the science events for the season. The final
layer of the painting again included some texture thanks to
the Dry Valleys.
“I’ve used Dry Valleys’ dirt everywhere,” said Cortada. “I wanted
Antarctica in the art.”
And Cortada wants back in Antarctica. He said he already has plans
to apply for another NSF grant. The artist has not fully
fleshed out the concept, but he would like to venture to the
Dry Valleys or Mount Erebus with a field team for several
weeks.
“Part of my excitement about this has been dealing with the
Antarctic scientists,” he said.
NSF-funded research in this story: Xavier Cortada, Antarctic
Artists and Writers Program, www.cortada.com/antarctica.
