Xavier Cortada

Xavier Cortada, Miami’s pioneer eco-artist, uses art’s elasticity to work across disciplines and engage communities in problem-solving. Particularly environmentally focused, his work intends to generate awareness and action around climate change, sea level rise, and biodiversity loss.

Over the past three decades, the 2024 Florida Artists Hall of Fame inductee has created art at the North and South Poles and across six continents, including more than 150 public artworks, installations, collaborative murals and socially engaged projects. He has been commissioned to create art for CERN, the White House, the World Bank, the Florida Turnpike, Port Everglades, and Miami City Hall, among many other art, science, and government venues.

Cortada, who served as the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for Miami-Dade County and as a member of the faculty at both the University of Miami (2019-2024) and Florida International University (2011-2018), received a 2023 National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Excellence in Science Communication Award, a 2022 Creative Capital Award, and a 2021 National Wetlands Award from the Environmental Law Institute.

Other accolades include: Home & Away Residency, Anderson Ranch, Aspen, Colorado (2022); Grist 50 (2022); New York Foundation for the Arts fiscally-sponsored artist (2008 and 2019); Rauschenberg Residency: Rising Waters Confab, Captiva, Florida (2015); and the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists & Writers Program, South Pole (2006-2007). In October 2022, Cortada delivered a TED Talk entitled “A creative approach to community climate action," which has garnered over one million views.

The ecological artist has exhibited and produced works internationally, including peace murals in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama, AIDS murals in Switzerland and South Africa, and eco-art projects in Holland, Scotland, and Taiwan. Cortada’s work is in the permanent collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, the Whatcom Museum, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum and the MDC Museum of Art + Design, among others.

Cortada, who was born in Albany, New York, grew up and lives in Miami, Florida. He received bachelor’s, master’s and law degrees from the University of Miami. Cortada serves as Artistic Director of the Xavier Cortada Foundation and Research Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Migration and Development.