Xavier Cortada selected collaborators to share their creativity with his Miami Corona Project viewers. Cortada did so to present other creative outlets on this platform during these challenging times.
Socially Engaged Art is a studio course teaching students all aspects of a collaborative, site-based, engaged art practice. The course uses art’s elasticity to work across disciplines to engage community members in addressing local environmental concerns. In mid-March, the class focus pivoted to addressing the coronavirus pandemic. These four works are the outcome of that exploration.
Students from the Fall 2020 semester of Xavier Cortada’s socially engaged art course at the University of Miami created a platform to inform students about the dangers and possible consequences of COVID-19 through the use of socially engaged art. Their aim was to reframe students’ minds on the possibilities of social gathering by encouraging safe, fun alternatives.
Juan Carlos Espinosa is a composer/sound artist who has written over 75 solo, chamber, choral and electro-acoustic works. The Miami-based composer’s work is informed by his concerns about the environment and the withering of human and cultural memory. Espinosa has created several soundscapes and installations in collaboration with his husband, artist Xavier Cortada, who he joined on a 2006-2007 National Science Foundation residency in Antarctica (McMurdo Station and the South Pole) and at the Kunst- en Natuurwandeling OverLeven, Foundation Nature Art Drenthe in the Netherlands in 2009.