The numbers one through 20 feature prominently in Xavier Cortada’s paintings and sculpture. The Miami resident’s intent is educational, but he’s not teaching math. His specialty is “Climate Science Art,” the title of his National Academy of Sciences exhibition. Much of the show is devoted to “The Underwater,” a project in which the Cuban American artist places numbers around his hometown. If he fixes a “2” on a site, that’s how many feet of rising ocean would inundate it.
Cortada’s investigation of sea level change began with a sojourn in Antarctica in 2006-2007. That was followed by a 2008 trip to the Arctic on a Russian icebreaker. In both regions, he made art with paint and melting ice. Examples of such paintings are on exhibit alongside photographs of the artist’s Antarctica installations. These include a circle of 24 shoes, each representing the people in one of the planet’s time zones, and 51 flags that mark the shifting locations of the South Pole on a moving ice sheet during the years that (as of 2006) humans had inhabited the region.