From November 8, 2018 through January 13, 2019, the Pinecrest Gardens Hibiscus Gallery will host an innovative art exhibition and related participatory public art project that dramatically illustrates the impact of rising sea levels on Florida communities.
Spearheaded by artist Xavier Cortada, the Underwater Home Owners Association is a participatory public art project undertaken in collaboration with the Village of Pinecrest. The project seeks to engage the village’s 6,000 households in addressing sea level rise through two interrelated events.
Xavier Cortada, Underwater Home Owners Association (2018). Photo of a marker installed in front of a Pinecrest Village home. © Cortada, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
From December 2 through December 8, 2018, the village will encourage each of its households to place an artist-designed lawn sign – or “marker” – in their front yard. The background of each marker is a print of one of Cortada’s extraordinary Antarctic ice paintings. Boldly superimposed on each print is a number depicting the property’s elevation –the number of feet sea level must rise to inundate the property. (Property owners can determine the elevation by referencing a free online mapping service provided by Florida International University’s Communication, Architecture and the Arts program.) The markers will be on display during the Art Basel Miami Beach show, when thousands of art-lovers descend on nearby Miami to explore the latest in contemporary art.
To familiarize Pinecrest households with the project in advance, area high school students collaborated with Cortada to map the elevation of four well-traveled intersections in Pinecrest by painting markers on the roadways. The roadway markers are a visible manifestation of the scope of the project to come.
Xavier Cortada, A-14: Tahiti (French Polynesia) from the Antarctic Ice Paintings: Global Coastlines series (2007). Sea ice from Antarctica’s Ross Sea, sediment from Antarctica’s Dry Valleys, and mixed media on paper. Dimensions: 12” x 9.” © Cortada, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
Throughout December, 2018, Pinecrest residents will be encouraged to meet informally block by block, explore issues they want to consider in addressing sea level rise, and prepare for the project’s final phase: the inaugural meeting of the Underwater Home Owners Association. The meeting, scheduled for January 9, 2019, 7:00 p.m., will be hosted by Xavier Cortada’s studio in Pinecrest Gardens, 11000 Red Road. All individuals bringing picture IDs and proof of participation in the marker display will be allowed to vote – one vote per household. The organization will elect officers and ratify by-laws.
Cortada explains: “By mapping the crisis to come, I make the invisible visible – block by block, house by house, neighbor by neighbor. I want to make the future impact of sea level rise something no longer possible to ignore. And by asking participants to join the Underwater Home Owners Association, I engage my neighbors as problem-solvers who will learn and work together to plan and prepare (themselves and their heirs) for the chaos to come.”
Xavier Cortada, A-01: Antarctica from the Antarctic Ice Paintings: Global Coastlines series (2007). Antarctic ice, sediment from Antarctica’s Dry Valleys, and mixed media on paper. Dimensions: 9” x 12.” © Cortada, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
The powerful backdrop to this pioneering project is Antarctic Paintings: Global Coastlines, an exhibition of watercolor paintings created by Cortada using glacier, sea ice and sediment samples. As a National Science Foundation Fellow in 2006-2007, Cortada obtained the samples from scientists working in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valley Long-term Ecological Research Program. The exhibition includes a painting titled “Antarctica,” another titled “Pinecrest,” and 60 others, each of which will be named for a global community threatened by sea level rise.
The University of Miami Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, Florida International University Sea Level Solutions Center, Eyes on the Rise and the Miami New Media Festival also lent assistance to this project.
