ARTIST'S PROFILE:

an exhibit by Cuban-American artist

Xavier Cortada

April 4th thru May 9th, 1998

at the

ArtCenter / South Florida

1037 Lincoln Road

Miami Beach, FL

(305) 534-3339

Photo of Xavier Cortada by Mark Surloff

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Xavier Cortada, 33, is a Cuban-American artist living and working in Miami. Although he has exhibited in museums and galleries on four continents, Cubaba is his first solo show in his hometown. The exhibit is truly a cultural celebration. About then and now. About identity and belonging. About being Cuban, being American. Being both, and being neither.

"They distill the swirl of images of Cuban nostalgia and American reality as seen by someone who grew up in the middle of the exile enclave," says Cortada. The work embodies the experience of fashioning a new hybridized identity in Cortada's life outside the Cuban community and mirrors the unconscious and constant renegotiation of identity that characterizes exile life.

Cortada works primarily in acrylic and oils on canvas, although he has created numerous murals and has an impressive portfolio of drawings. Like his artist father and uncle before him, Cortada draws inspiration from the Cuban modernism and the vanguardia artists. His work is also informed by the twisting currents of twentieth century art, the visual barrage of advertising, the iconography of estampitas religiosas, Saturday morning cartoons, the stained glass windows of Gesu Catholic Church in Miami, and importantly, his travels through Africa and Latin America.

The painter's visual heritage can also be traced along the black lines and collapsing spaces from Pablo Picasso to Amelia Pelaez, who also inspires Cortada's tropical palette. The portraits of long-necked women and translucent faces are subversive Modigliani's, while the syncretic sensibilities of Wifredo Lam influence Cortada's easy blending of symbols and cultures. Cortada slashes and tortures the canvas with knives and hard-bristled brushes evoking the athletic gestures of Willem de Kooning. Francis Bacon teaches him to thrust his personal passions and secret desires on cloth, layers of paint rubbing together creating a bruising picture of the artist's soul.

The artist improvises and plays on canvas, manipulating meaning and texture to get his message across. He is also an attorney and community leader, who combines his artistic talent with his concern for social and political issues. Among the topics he has explored through his work are community development, racism, violence, poverty, political freedom, AIDS, and Cuba.

Cortada has exhibited in Washington, D.C., New York City, Berkeley, San Antonio, Madrid, Johannesburg, Mauritius, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Palm Beach. He was the first foreign artist to exhibit in Soweto after the end of apartheid in South Africa. Cortada's work has been recently shown in solo exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cuzco, Peru, the Museo Tambo Quirquincho in La Paz, Bolivia, and the Regional Historical Museum of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Compartiendo con Bolivia, his Arts America/USIA sponsored solo exhibit, is currently in Sucre as it tours throughout South America in 1998. In January 1998, his work was part of the "Cubans in America" group exhibit at the Florida Museum of Hispanic and Latin American Art in Coral Gables, Florida.

Cortada has also lectured on the use of art as an agent of social change and painted murals with community groups in places as diverse as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Leadville, Colorado, La Paz, Bolivia and Freetown, Sierra Leone. In addition, he has painted murals for HBO, MADD, the Indiana Governor's Office, Miami-Dade Cultural Affairs Council, and Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places.

Locally he has collaborated with museums (the Lowe Art Museum, the Wolfsonian, Miami Youth Museum), and non-profit groups (including the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, Centro Campesino, the Little Haiti Housing Authority, and the Little Havana Institute, among others) to create community murals. In October 1998, Cortada will unveil two 24-foot tall glass mosaic murals on the new Niketown building at Shops at Sunset Place in South Miami.