Later Cortada came to view those Cubaba years
as a youngster’s crude attempt at negotiating identity - a necessary passage to
self-discovery, and ultimately, self-acceptance. Cubaba, the exhibit, is product of those
explorations of self, and of one Cuban-American’s coming to terms with that part of
his identity is truly de aqui and what part is de alla.
The Cubaba series offers not the simplistic iconography of Cuban nostalgia, but the
tempered expressions of being caught somewhere between the truths and the myths that frame
el exilio. When are you most Cuban? When you’re wearing your Cubaba persona in
good-natured defiance of shame? Or when you’re kneeling before your virgin on the
edge of Biscayne Bay. And when are you most American? When you’re praying for an
unknown island, safe at the edge of that bay, or when you finally find yourself on that
mythical island, praying among strangers in a strange place?Cubaba reaffirms the precarious balancing act that is bi-culturalism. And
the endless search that is finding a sense of place and person when you are the product of
two worlds.
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 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
renegotiations 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 artist. 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 Pable 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.
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, Freetown, and Sierra
Leone. In addition, he has painted murals for Nike, 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-FIC, 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. |
