Sanford Biggers
(b. 1970)1999–2000 Artist in ResidenceSanford Biggers is a multimedia artist who seamlessly weaves U.S. history into broader contexts of global histories, narratives, and styles.
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, California, Sanford Biggers is best known for working with found materials to reexamine both conceptual and physical matter. Biggers treats history as a conceptually found material, using physical objects and art historical traditions from different locales and contexts to upend received historical narratives, with his artworks functioning as repositories of memory.
Biggers employs various visual forms in his exploration of found objects to contemplate methods of transformation and to confront the legacy of slavery and the historical treatment of Black bodies in the United States. Biggers’s experiences visiting fabric shops in immigrant communities in Los Angeles with his mother as a young boy and teaching English, and later, completing a 2003 residency in Japan largely informed his later artistic practices. His exposure to cultures outside of the United States allowed him to envision and execute a conceptual practice that brings together disparate cultures and contexts.
Biggers received a BA from Morehouse College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He was a 1999–2000 Studio Museum artist in residence and was featured in the Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition Freestyle (2001).
Exhibitions and Events
Sanford Biggers
(b. 1970)1999–2000 Artist in ResidenceSanford Biggers is a multimedia artist who seamlessly weaves U.S. history into broader contexts of global histories, narratives, and styles.
Haute Mess, 2014
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, California, Sanford Biggers is best known for working with found materials to reexamine both conceptual and physical matter. Biggers treats history as a conceptually found material, using physical objects and art historical traditions from different locales and contexts to upend received historical narratives, with his artworks functioning as repositories of memory.
Biggers employs various visual forms in his exploration of found objects to contemplate methods of transformation and to confront the legacy of slavery and the historical treatment of Black bodies in the United States. Biggers’s experiences visiting fabric shops in immigrant communities in Los Angeles with his mother as a young boy and teaching English, and later, completing a 2003 residency in Japan largely informed his later artistic practices. His exposure to cultures outside of the United States allowed him to envision and execute a conceptual practice that brings together disparate cultures and contexts.
Biggers received a BA from Morehouse College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He was a 1999–2000 Studio Museum artist in residence and was featured in the Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition Freestyle (2001).
Exhibitions and Events