Xavier Cortada

As 2025 comes to a close, we are grateful for the partners, educators, agencies, and people who made this a year of public engagement at scale—one in which creativity served as a powerful tool across educational, scientific, and public spaces.

Throughout the year, the Foundation supported 40+ public programs, lectures, workshops, and performances, working with 30+ partner institutions across government, schools, universities, museums, and civic organizations. These engagements reached audiences from K–12 students to professional and executive leaders, from Canada to Chile. Along the way, the Foundation helped unveil more than a dozen of Cortada’s environmental public art projects across eleven different cities, while educational initiatives and convenings advanced conversations around climate adaptation, ocean justice, truth, and art for social change.

At the heart of this work is a simple premise: when communities can see shared risk and shared responsibility, they are better equipped to imagine, and build, shared solutions. Here’s a look back at 2025:

• Centennial Public Art Sculpture | Coral Gables
• Miami Art Week Panel Discussion
• College of William & Mary Muscarelle Museum Lecture
• Helped Shape Aspen Institute’s National Water Strategy
• The Air Between Us | Laramie, Wyoming
• Seahorse Society Mural | Key Biscayne
• In Gear: Lifelines and Vital Signs | Palm Beach County
• Cortada Challenged Incoming UM Med School Class
• 2nd Annual Community Climate Conversation
• Green Sports Alliance Summit Collaborative Mural & Speech
• Cortada Spoke at ‘Upwell: A Wave of Ocean Justice’
• Cortada Eco-Art Courtyard Launched in Hialeah
• Cortada & Roberti Lectured at Frost Museum of Science
• The Underwater: Broward | Public Schools
• Steven & Dorothea Green Critics’ Lecture Series
• Water Columns | Jacksonville Beach
• Florida Artists Hall of Fame Induction
• National Academies Gulf Coast Roundtable
• Broward County Mayor Unveiled Elevation Sculpture
• Cortada Spoke at Chilean National Congress

Ten years ago, I brought CLIMA to Hialeah.

In late 2015, while the world’s attention was on the Paris Climate Talks, I turned the Milander Center for Arts & Entertainment into a science art platform on sea level rise, climate change, and biodiversity loss. For the first twelve days of CLIMA we convened daily participatory performances and panel discussions to move the conversation from abstraction to lived reality here in South Florida.

CLIMA also carried work born from my 2015 Rauschenberg Residency Rising Waters Confab, including a screening of my short film “5 Actions to Stop Rising Seas.” That residency brought artists and scientists together around rising seas, and I brought those ideas back home to the community most at risk.

A decade later, the questions CLIMA asked feel even more urgent:
What do we owe each other when the water rises? And what does real local action look like before “later” becomes too late?

Twenty years ago, in 2005, I painted “Five Flags / Florida” to celebrate Florida Heritage Month 2006. I was using our coastline to show our heritage: each wave represented a new wave of immigrants who set roots and established communities. The mangrove roots metaphorically depict our interconnectedness as people who share a rich and diverse cultural history.

The work was reproduced as a poster that was given to every fourth grader across the state. It contained this artist statement on the reverse side:

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FIVE FLAGS / FLORIDA

The mangrove root on the left symbolizes Florida’s indigenous people. The two clusters of clouds above mark their first encounter with Europeans: Juan Ponce de Leon’s landing in 1513.

Each of the mangrove plants rising above the horizon represent the five flags that have since flown over the peninsula:

The first plant has two sets of leaves representing Spain’s two periods of control: 1513-1763 and 1784-1821. The leaves on the second plant resemble the fleur-de-lis on the French flag when it was flown over Florida during 1564-65. Great Britain’s reign over Florida, 1763-1784, is shown as a mangrove plant with sliced leaves as it divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida. As the war for American independence ended, all of the territory was returned to the Spanish.

In 1821, the United States bought Florida from Spain for $5 million. The fourth plant represents the American flag. Back then the American flag had 24 stars. That number grew by three when Florida became the 27th state in 1845. The plant is bifurcated because Florida split from the Union in 1861 to join the Confederacy. After the Confederacy was defeated, Florida returned to the Union at the end of the Civil War in 1865. Finally, the shriveled mangrove plant represents the demise of the Confederacy.

The mangrove root on the right honors those whose search for freedom (e.g., Seminoles, slaves using the Underground Railroad, Holocaust survivors, Cuban exiles, and Haitian refugees among others) brought them to Florida’s shores.

Xavier Cortada, “Five Flags / Florida,” 61.5″ x 96″, acrylic on canvas, 2005

https://cortada.com/art2005/five-flags-florida/