BIO

Xavier Cortada has created art installations at the North Pole (as a NYFA sponsored artist, 2008) and South Pole (through the National Science Foundation, 2007) to help address environmental issues at every point in between. In 2006, Cortada developed the Reclamation Project to engage South Florida residents in the reforestation of local areas. In 2009, he is participating in environmental art residencies in The Netherlands and Quebec, see: http://www.xaviercortada.com/events/event_list.asp.

The Miami artist has been commissioned to create art for the White House, the Florida Supreme Court, Miami City Hall, Miami-Dade County Hall, the Museum of Florida History, the Miami Art Museum, and the Frost Art Museum. Cortada’s work is also in the permanent collection of The World Bank. Cortada is also known for his international collaborative public art projects. These include International AIDS Conference murals in Switzerland and South Africa, peace murals in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, and child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama.

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. For more information visit www.cortada.com or see attached bio and resume.

The Markers

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. Please click on image to read the list of historic events that have moved the world forward during the past five decades.

The 150,000-year Journey

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.

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BIO

Philippe Boissonnet was born in France in 1957. He is currently a full-time professor in Arts at the UQTR University (Canada). He has been recipient in 1998 of the Shearwater Foundation for the Holographic Arts Prize (New York) and the Recommandation Prize of the ARTEC Biennal (Nagoya) in 1997. Combining the tools and dynamics of technological arts with a long-standing tradition of artists who have chosen to work with light, Boissonnet adopts a two-pronged approach : reprentation and interaction.Since 1983 he has been involved in a number of group and individual exhibitions, both on the national and international level (Europe, USA, Canada, Brasil, Australia, Japan). In 2007, he has been invited by the Argentine Ministry of Culture for participating to an «artist residency» in Antarctica within a group of Earth Sciences Research
Program which was related to the arising global warming issues. New works from the photo/video/holographic series related to Antarctica issues has been exhibited in Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, Mexico and Quebec (Montreal, Trois-Rivieres).

ABOUT «CP/TOMS TOTAL OZONE»

Philippe Boissonnet became aware at Ushuaia (2007) of an urgency to put the world as it should be, starting with the South, as did Nicolas Uriburu, to rid himself of a bias he inevitably carries with him ; that of a Northern view. Many of his holographic globes puts the Southern Hemisphere into relief.  In addition to this particular phenomenon of perception, which is at the heart of his artistic expression, this act has proven to be of some political value. He works, as always, on the margin, and the discontinuities between the various forms of artistic expression ; drawing, photography, sculpture, holography, digital imagery. And he floods the imagination with metaphors. Thus, he sees the Earth as a living organism, and acts by merging its image with bodies, tattooed skins for instance, and by identifying it through myths : Gaïa or Atlas, even Galileo. Humans have always been a measure of everything, according to greek proverbs. Today, once again, within the art of Philippe Boissonnet : the North is in the South. Through the way we look at it and the tools we use for it. That’s what emerged from his large scale photographic mural inspired by its journey to Anyarctica (2007), «CP/TOMS, Total Ozone» (a work produced in 2006 with the complicity of the argentine arrtist Andrea Juan).

Philippe Boissonnet and Hervé Fischer, (august 8th, 2009)

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