HEATHER BHANDARI: Hi, everyone.
Hi.
Hi, Wendy.
Hi, everybody.
Thank you for coming out.
I'm Heather Bhandari, an adjunct
lecturer in the visual arts
department.
I first want to thank
the amazing women
in the visual arts
department for making
this a finely-tuned machine.
Thanks.
Yeah, thanks Olanda Estrada,
Kristine Dodd, and Leslie
Bostrom, the department chair.
Yes.
Also, thanks to Louis and
Paul for AV in the back.
And thank you and Happy
Birthday to Winnie Greer,
who is our photographer.
A couple of housekeeping items
before I introduce Sanford.
We are recording this lecture,
so if you have questions,
please make your way
to one of the mics,
and ask your question into
the mic so it's recorded.
Also, no video and
no flash photography.
Thanks.
So it is my great pleasure
to introduce Sanford Biggers,
whose work I have known
since I admired it
in the freestyle exhibition
at the Studio Museum
in Harlem in 2001.
His work is an interplay
of narrative perspective
and history that speaks to
current social, political, and
economic happenings,
while also examining
the contexts that bore them.
His diverse practice
positions him
as a collaborator with the
past through explorations
of often-overlooked cultural
and political narratives
from American history.
As creative director
and keyboardist,
he fronts Moon Medicin,
a multimedia concept band
that straddles
visual art and music,
with performances staged
against a backdrop
of curated sound
effects and video.
Moon Medicin performed at Open
Spaces Kansas City in 2018
and at the Kennedy Center in
Washington, DC, this year.
Sanford was raised
in Los Angeles
and currently lives
in New York City.
He was awarded the 2017
Rome Prize in visual arts.
He's had recent solo exhibitions
at the Contemporary Art Museum
St. Louis, the Museum
of Contemporary Art
Detroit, MASS MoCA, the
Brooklyn Museum, among others.
His work has been shown in
several institutional group
exhibitions, including the
Menil Collection and Tate
Modern, the Met and
the Barnes Foundation.
Sanford's work is held in the
permanent collections of MoMA,
the Met, the Whitney, the Museum
of Contemporary Art Chicago,
the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis,
and the National Museum of
African-American History
and Culture in Washington,
DC, among many others.
He's represented by Marianne
Boesky in New York City,
and there is a fabulous
New Yorker profile on him,
if you guys want to look it up.
Please join me in
welcoming Sanford Biggers.
[APPLAUSE]
SANFORD BIGGERS: Good
afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for having me.
I'm delighted to be here.
I think we started trying
to arrange this, maybe,
three years ago.
And things just got in the
way and kept coming up.
So I'm very pleased
to finally be here.
And happy beginning of
school for all of you.
How's everything going?
Are we all here?
You still maintaining,
surviving?
It only gets more difficult.
Anyway, so I've been
doing this thing lately.
I've been sort of, I
guess, playing slide
roulette with myself.
So finding different
combinations
of objects and projects that
I've done over the last 20
years or so.
And, you know, exploring
different avenues
in my understanding
of my own work,
I find that this is a good
practice because it influences
the work I make going
forward and how I
process what I've already done.
Just for the sake of
curiosity, how many
artists, musicians, intermedia
creators are in the room today?
That's beautiful.
All right.
Fight the good fight.
The road is not straight.
OK, so what I'm going
to focus on tonight
is one of the strands of
my work that I consider
related to power objects.
And power objects, as you
know, are these objects that
you've probably seen in
most encyclopedic museum
collections, where it's an
object from a primordial
culture, whether it be from
Asia or Africa, pre-Columbian,
Greco-Roman, and so on--
objects that were venerated
and used for, often, ritual,
but then later, become
collected and put
into vitrines and museums.
And now they're
considered art objects.
And I believe they can
be all of the above.
A phrase that I often use,
even in my own practice,
is both-and, not either-or.
I'm not really interested
in straight dichotomies,
but more the porous
relationships
between art forms, materials,
genres, time periods,
and so on.
So to that end, I'm going to
show very early work of mine.
This is from grad school,
when I was at the Art
Institute of Chicago.
And this was one of the
first power objects I made,
and this one is called
Duchamp in the Congo.
And I was always sort of baffled
by the story of the Modernists
and the Cubists being so
inspired by African objects
that they developed these
art forms around it.
And that was an
interesting story to me,
but I started to posit it under
the guise of postmodernism.
So in that scenario, what would
it mean for Marcel Duchamp
to go to Africa
and study objects?
So this was one of the
pieces that came out of that.
And then there was
a partner piece
called The Hangman's House.
Now back to this notion
of a power object.
For me personally,
it becomes an object
that not only has
its own past life,
but it also is charged
by certain things that I
may do to it, or context
that I put it in.
So both that wooden
block and the book
that you're looking
at right here
were objects that
I found when I was
doing a post-baccalaureate
program in Baltimore, Maryland,
at MICA, Maryland
Institute College of Art.
And there was a library
that was closing,
and all these books were
getting thrown out--
literally thrown
out, dumped out.
So I collected tons of them.
And I made this
huge installation
that I will not show.
But when I had to move
from Baltimore to Chicago,
I was keeping what I could, and
I kept some of those objects.
So now these objects are
starting to travel around
the country with me.
You know, part of
being a sculptor
and an installation artist is
being a pack rat by nature.
I'm sure some of you
are afflicted with this.
These things follow us.
So I took this book, as
well as that block of wood,
and I started to embed them
with nails and shards of glass
and sharp objects,
much in the spirit
of an nkisi or a minkisi
object from various cultures
within Africa.
These objects are usually
placed near or outside a shrine,
and they usually sort of
connote the amount of power
that that group of
people may have.
So if someone is coming
to do harm to that group,
they see this figure with
all these different objects,
this dangerous,
perilous-looking object,
and that wards
them off and makes
them aware of the kind of power
that they are walking into,
and that they
should be forewarned
not to go any further.
So with that in mind, I
took The Hangman's House,
this book that I thought
had a very loaded title.
I was thinking very much
about the United States
and the history of lynching and
America as a hangman's house.
So I started to embed
it with the nails--
and this is the opposite side--
and to further charge this,
I took these objects out
to the suburbs outside of
Chicago and dressed in a suit
and tie and went to a diner
near the train station, where
a bunch of other commuters
going back and forth to Chicago
usually would have
breakfast, coffee,
you know, scrambled eggs,
and read their paper.
So there's a photo shoot
of me in black and white--
actual photographs,
not digital-- this
was an analog project.
And I'm sitting at the
diner with my suit and tie
with my briefcase
which was, you know,
the block of wood
with the wheel on it.
And this was my newspaper,
and I'm reading it.
So it was sort of an absurdist
performance, if you will.
And then when the train finally
came, I got onto the train,
and I was searching
to find a seat.
I had a photographer
with me, but he
was far enough away that nobody,
you know, put us together.
So everyone was pretty much
paying attention to me.
And I traverse back
and forth on this train
looking for one seat.
And then the one seat I
found, I sat down next
to this older woman--
older white woman who
just very casually looked
right over and just tilted
her glasses and said to me,
Is that an nkisi?
And I was shocked.
This woman, she knew
the whole story.
So it turns out, she
was a docent of one
of the museums
outside of Chicago,
and she worked in
the African section.
So out of this train, hundreds
of people, the one person
I sit by just was
like, oh, yeah, I got
a couple of those in the house.
So I was like--
you know, but I thought that was
a serendipitous type of thing.
And I was like, OK, clearly
I'm doing something right.
And something about these
objects got us together.
So there is some power there.
And that kind of
experience is something
that really attracts
me to objects
and makes me want to put
objects into certain situations.
And I will extend that.
I have a pretty non-hierarchical
approach to material.
So when I say "found object,"
it could be a found music file.
It could be found video
footage, film footage.
Literal books,
radios, you name it.
Anything that has
had a past life,
that can still exhibit
some type of auratic power.
Soon after that, I was--
I should preface this.
I lived in Japan for around
three years in the mid '90s,
and that really
influenced the way
I was approaching work by the
time I got back to the U.S.
as well.
So I had this phase
where I was doing
these minimalist projects, where
I would take a found object
and just try to do one action,
and that action could bring out
some type of maximal
type of impact.
So for this particular
piece, I had a boombox.
And I put it--
I heated up this very
large steel plate
and was able to control it
enough so that it melted
at an even pace, and
it created this--
what I consider to be a
very beautiful cascading,
decaying boombox.
And this was around 2004, 2005.
And I called this
piece, Hip Hop Is Dead.
And this was before Nas did
his Hip Hop Is Dead album,
and before that generation of
emcees declared hip hop dead.
It was already dying by
the time I made this.
It's been resurrected
since, don't worry.
It's still around somewhere.
But I did several projects with
this notion, the second one
being this, where I was
invited back to Japan.
And for this project, I
started to make singing bowls.
And these are fashioned
after Buddhist and Shinto
singing bowls,
you know, the type
that you can sort of rub the
mallet on the side of it,
and it starts to vibrate and
creates different pitches.
So for this particular
singing bowl,
I made this by collecting hip
hop jewelry from Harlem, where
my studio was, and then
when I got to Japan,
also collecting hip hop jewelry
from various areas in Tokyo.
At this time, hip hop was
extremely large in Japan,
so it was very easy to
find that type of material.
But the next step was
then to collaborate
with several classical
artisans within Tokyo
to melt those metals
down into an alloy
and create these singing bowls.
So this is really distilled
detritus of hip hop culture.
And stamped right on the side,
it says "Hip hop [INAUDIBLE],","
which means, "In fond
memory of hip hop."
And I took these--
I made around eight of them.
And the residency that
I was doing at the time
was around an hour and
a half outside of Tokyo,
in an area [INAUDIBLE].
And I was there for four months,
and I developed a relationship
with the head monk
of a Zen temple.
And throughout the months
of going and meditating
with him, finally--
obviously he knew I want
to do something there,
but the tradition
is you just sort
of have to build a
relationship and rapport.
And then they will suggest
that you do something.
So he suggested that maybe
I should do a project there.
I was like, that is
such a great idea.
Gladly.
[LAUGHTER]
So we embarked on this project
where we did an improvised bell
chorus, including some of the
bells that I made and-- let me
see if I can get this
pointer to work--
yes-- and some of the bells that
are from the actual monastery
itself.
This particular one
is over 200 years old.
It's massive.
It's around-- probably two feet
in diameter on the interior.
So there were
various sized bells,
and a bunch of volunteers
and friends of mine
got together-- it was 16 of
us-- and I drew a diagram,
and we followed that
diagram as a score,
and we did this bell chorus.
And the final bell was hit
by the head monk himself.
So he was basically ringing
in fond memory of hip hop.
So it was very bizarre
performance but--
interesting aside from that
is, through my relationship
with him, it turned out in
the time that I was there,
they were going to have
this very rare ceremony.
They were going to induct
a new monk into that order.
And that ritual had not
happened in around 70 years.
So they invited me.
I was the only foreigner there.
And it was probably close to
200 Japanese people ranging
from, you know, 90s, all
the way down to infants.
So there's a big picture.
I don't have it here with me.
If we have time after, I'll
find it on my computer.
It's almost like
a Where's Waldo,
except it's like me, the
tall black guy in a suit,
standing amongst all
these Japanese folks.
But it was interesting to
watch this ritual because,
as rare as it was
and as old as it
was, no one had actually ever
done it, except for one person.
And he had to try to relay that
to all the other participants.
So while they're
doing the ritual,
you can see them sort of
looking at each other like,
do I do this?
Do I do that?
And I was like,
oh, this is great.
This is like my
group performing.
We don't know what
we're doing either.
So-- but it was good to see
behind the scenes of that.
And when they took their break,
they just went to the back
and drank whiskey and
smoked cigarettes.
So back with that notion
of just one simple gesture
to create an object.
I have been collecting African
sculptures for several years.
I picked some up in Japan.
I picked several
up in the U.S. I've
even picked some up in South
Africa and Ghana and Senegal.
And I don't really use
them directly in my work,
but I have them sort
of as inspirations.
But at one point, I
did take one of them,
and I did a simple
slice through them,
and then I put them on
two different heights--
pedestals of two
different heights--
and created this
piece called Eclipse.
And this was sort of
a way of reintroducing
the figure into my work.
And that's sort of where
things have been going since.
So I vacillate between
very direct representations
of the figure or sometimes
implied participation
with a figure.
Another example of that might
be this piece right here,
which I consider it to be a
mandala, at the end of the day.
Many of you know a mandala is
a circular-based diagram that
is typically used
in Buddhist writings
and texts and ceremony.
And this particular one
I call Lotus, the lotus
being a symbol of
purity and wholeness.
And this is, in fact, a 7
and 1/2 foot diameter glass
disk with hand-etched
details into it.
And when you get
closer to it you
realize that each
of those details
are actually the
pedals of slave ships.
And this is a very famous
diagram from the 1800s
that slavers used to use
to show how to best pack
human cargo in taking bodies
from Africa to various places
in the triangle trade route.
So I looked at the sort
of duplicitous meaning
and presentation of this as a
very seductive and beautiful
object that makes you
want to get closer.
But the closer
you get, you start
to realize the sort of horrific
reference that's in it.
And the fact that
it's transparent
means that as people
walk around it,
you see yourself through
it, and they see you
through it, because
in my opinion, this--
the impact of slavery
is felt universally,
if we speak karmically.
And I think that's the
only way to really deal
with it at this point, because
obviously, slavery is not just
here in America.
It's been around everywhere.
So this is part of
the human condition
and a different way
of understanding it.
In this particular
context, this is
at the Rubin Museum in
New York City, which
is a Buddhist museum.
And for me, this was
probably the exact place
where I wanted it to be, because
now it was seen literally
in the context of
other mandalas,
and sort of as a healing object.
But it was also shown
in Richmond, Virginia,
right along the James River,
which many of you know--
close, to Jamestown,
not far from Jamestown,
where the largest
amount of African slaves
were brought to
America for trade.
So it was positioned
in a way where
was basically overlooking--
almost like an eye
overlooking-- the trail
that the slaves would have
to be shipped on till
they got to Shockoe Bottom
in downtown Richmond,
where it is basically
a center of slave auctions.
And if you go there today,
the vestiges of that
are still there.
So this is very
much living history.
And to create that
piece, we had to carve--
hand carve-- over 6,000 figures.
And the digital technology
was not to the point
where it can make the
cuts at this size.
So we had to actually
do this manually.
And I know this is a
sort of dark humor,
so I hope I don't
offend everybody.
I'm sure I'm offended
somebody, but--
I was working with a team of
around seven or eight people,
and every time I would come
in, they're like, oh, oh, here
comes Master.
They were all white, by the way.
I should probably include that.
So we had a good
working relationship.
And later I was asked
by the city of New York
to do a version of this
which was much larger.
This is around 30 feet
diameter, and this
is on the side of
the Eagle Academy
for Young Men, which is a
school that services black
and brown teenage
boys in the Bronx.
And to get this put on the wall,
to even get this commission,
I had to go to around five or
six different panel meetings
and defend my choice of putting
this type of iconography
on the wall, because there were
several people on the panel who
were in denial that
this had anything
to do with Latin
American culture.
It had nothing to do with Puerto
Rico, had nothing do with Cuba,
had, you know, and so on.
So I'm like, really?
This is New York.
I'm in a room full of people
from the Dominican Republic,
and they're saying there
is no relationship.
So it was very, very
difficult. But finally
it worked out, so I'm
glad this was here.
But what I'm trying to
do with these objects
is create my own power objects.
And you see this icon come back
and forth throughout my work.
So here it is right now in a
silk screen on a recent collage
work that I did.
And we'll return
to this, but I'm
going to show you a few other
sort of original power objects
that I've created.
[PIANO MUSIC]
SANFORD BIGGERS: So this piece
right here is called Blossom.
I made this at the same time
that I did the Lotus glass
piece.
And what you're looking
at is a baby grand piano
that is being upended
by a sculpted tree.
This tree was-- I fabricated
this tree with a small team.
And the whole piece comes apart.
I'm just telling you
this on a technical level
for all the artists in here.
It comes apart in various branch
systems so that it can travel.
But when it's fully
installed, this
is the effect that it gives.
And what you heard is
literally the music
that comes out of the piano
when bodies get near it.
So there is a sensor
that starts to kick in.
And then the pedals
start moving,
and the keys start
moving, and it's
my own improvisation on the
American standard, "Strange
Fruit," by Billie Holiday
and Abel Meeropol.
That song is, you know, part of
the classic American songbook,
but of course, it is also
alluding to black bodies
swinging in the Southern breeze.
So, strange fruit.
And this was inspired
by an incident
that happened in Louisiana-- in
Jena, Louisiana, specifically.
Some of you may
remember this, but there
was an incident called the
Jena Six incident, where
in Jena, Louisiana, at
a relatively integrated
high school, there
was a tree where
all the popular white
kids would hang out.
And one day, one of
the black students
wanted to go and hang
out and asked the teacher
if he could do so.
The teacher thought it was sort
of strange that he would ask
and said, go sit by the tree.
So the kid goes over there.
Gradually, the white kids leave.
The next morning, when
everyone returns to school,
there's nooses
hanging from the tree.
And this started a whole
bunch of incidents,
not just in Louisiana
at this point,
but nooses just
started popping up.
Even at Columbia, where I
was teaching at the time,
there was a noose found on one
of the black professor's doors,
when they came in for
class the next day.
So it was this weird thing
that was happening, obviously.
But in Jena,
specifically, that started
a bunch of events that
culminated almost eight
months later, when a
group of black kids
were going into a corner
store, and a few white kids
were leaving, and
they got into a fight.
The white kids pulled out a gun.
The black kids beat them
up and took the gun.
And when the cops came,
all the black kids
got arrested because
they stole the gun.
So obviously, there was outrage.
And then people started
to march on the city,
and this whole incident started.
So to me, this piece was sitting
somewhere in between the piano
representing a body,
a body that might
be hanging from that tree.
You could see the
piano stool there,
as if there was a
body that was lynched,
and they kicked the
stool from under them.
But it's also the place where
the Buddha finds enlightenment.
So there is this possibility
to understand something deeper
beyond just the reference
to the Jena Six.
But here we are, sort
of at the crossroads,
which the tree, in several
cultures, is also a symbol of.
The crossroads between heaven
and hell, good, evil, and so
on.
And this particular installation
was a solo exhibition
I did at the Brooklyn Museum
several years ago called
Sweet Funk.
There is this Cheshire grin
that's hanging up there.
I'll go into that a little bit.
That's another power object that
I was working with at the time.
And in the background
on the wall,
you see some quilt pieces, and
we'll go into some of that.
And there's another
piano piece in that room.
So this Cheshire grin.
I made this when I was
living in Stuttgart, Germany.
And this particular one is
hanging in the Black Forest.
So as you see it right
there, it's on a timer.
So the teeth light up, and
they blink, and they go around,
and then they shut
down for a few minutes,
and then it comes back.
So like the Cheshire cat, it's
going in and out of appearance.
So it's just like from
the Lewis Carroll story.
And I was interested
in that read.
I also have it prominently
featured in a video project
that I was doing
there at the time,
so this is a still
from that project.
But then I brought
that same piece back,
and I showed it in the
same-- or in an adjacent room
in Richmond,
Virginia, where Lotus
was in a room-- in one
room, and the Cheshire
was in the other room.
And the read on it was
completely different.
It became derogatory.
It was about
blackface minstrelsy.
It was all these very
nefarious meanings
that our American pathology
immediately gravitated to.
Whereas when it was in
Europe and called Cheshire,
it was sort of just
Alice in Wonderland.
And I was interested in how
the same exact object can cause
so many different reactions.
This is something that I
think I still experiment with.
Also-- oh, sorry,
we missed a slide--
there you go.
And that same image was
made into a billboard.
This is it in Los Angeles, on
La Brea over the Union sneaker
store.
So in L.A., this was just
a carnivalesque smile.
So it's interesting to
see how the read changes
wherever I show this.
There's one image I don't
have in here right now,
but I showed this at
the sculpture center.
And it was the same billboard,
but hanging from one corner
and dangling in the space.
So this is around 30 feet--
you know, 25 feet tall.
So it was very dangerous, and it
was just dangling on one point,
and it was banging
against a wall.
So it was smiling, but it was
also clearly very violent.
And I was also interested in
animating it as an object.
So around this
time I also started
to get into quilts,
strangely enough.
I was invited to Philadelphia
to be part of a program called
Hidden Cities, where
several artists were invited
to reimagine historical
locations that
were going into disrepair
and basically forgotten.
So we basically reanimated them.
And in my research,
I really started
to gravitate towards
stained glass.
But while I was there
talking to people
and seeing more
examples of quilts,
I started to think
that the quilt was
doing the same thing that I
wanted the stained glass to do.
It was colored pattern.
But instead of it
being sort of steeped
in this sort of European
and religious context,
it was more vernacular,
it was more American,
it was more feminine.
It was speaking to me
in a different way.
And around that same time,
I saw the Gee's Bend show
at the Whitney Museum.
Did anyone see
that show in here?
Yeah.
So if you haven't seen it,
if you don't know about Gee's
Bend quilts, check them out.
And if you ever get a chance
to see them in person,
check them out.
These are done by a
group of black women
who have a very distinct
sort of approach to quilting,
very improvisational,
very modernist.
But it was-- they did
this show, and for me,
when I saw that
work at the Whitney,
it was some of the most
interesting painting
that I'd seen in years.
And I went to grad
school for painting
and had not painted
anything for 15 years.
But I saw that show, and I was
like, OK, this is getting my--
you know, getting
my juices going.
So I decided to abandon
the notion of stained glass
and work strictly with quilts.
And what you're
looking at right now
is the main space
at the Mother Bethel
Church in central Philadelphia.
And the Mother Bethel Church
is the oldest black-owned piece
of land and was also a major
hub on the Underground Railroad.
And in my research, I
came upon the notion--
the idea that quilts were used
on the Underground Railroad
as signposts.
So as escaping slaves
would pass a safe house,
if a quilt was
folded a certain way
or depicted a
certain pattern, it
gave directions and
information to the slaves.
And whether or not this
winds up being true,
I think as a vernacular
history, it's
something that was enough
to start a project on.
It was something that
interested me greatly,
because I started
to consider myself
a late collaborator
with the people who
made the original quilt.
So then I, in turn,
add another layer of
code directly onto it.
So ultimately, these
quilts that, you know,
served one function
before, now become
palimpsests for an American
story told out over centuries.
And I started to put, once
again, the Lotus images right
here.
I made several swatches of
silk screen lotus imagery.
And I created a map that was
overhead map of Philadelphia.
And all those white
dots are basically
other Underground Railroad
stations throughout Philly.
And I turned it
into a star chart.
And this is sort of
how my mind works.
I started to consider
Harriet Tubman an astronaut
because, essentially, she's
using the stars and the sky
to navigate.
And she's navigating to freedom.
So in my-- you know,
the way my mind works,
that sort of equates her
with being an astronaut.
So I started to use
those constellations
and then depict them
directly onto the quilts.
So that was the first approach.
And then I started
getting deeper and deeper
into quilt lore, and
I started to refer
to the work of my
cousin, John Biggers.
John Biggers was a painter--
American painter and muralist
who died 15 years ago.
And he was part
of the WPA system.
So he was making very--
what they now call Black
Romantic, very gestural,
figurative paintings
that depicted
the Depression
and the conditions
that black Americans were
living in at the time.
In 1957, he won a UNESCO award,
fellowship, and moved to Ghana.
And he started to study
African fabrics and imagery.
And then he came back and
created this interesting sort
of figurative, geometric
abstraction style,
which you see right here.
So all those triangles create
a very interesting sort
of matrix, but of course, you
have the figurative element.
And he's also referencing
not only African tiles,
but American quilts.
And then I started to
even extrapolate further
and started to see
constellations on the backs,
on the scarification
of former slaves.
And in an attempt to
transform that language,
I started to use that as
one of my symbols as well.
So now you see the same
figure without the scars,
without the detail, and it
looks like almost a regal pose
of somebody surveying
their own land.
So I'm trying to find ways to
basically transform and rewrite
history, basically.
So I'm just going to go through
a few examples of some quilt
works.
Most of the large ones you'll
see are around king size,
89- by 69-inch squares
and rectangles and so on.
This is a very recent one.
I actually just finished this
one two or three months ago.
And I use everything
and anything on these.
I use old quilts.
I paint directly
on antique quilts.
So all the quilts I
paint on are pre-1900.
But then I'll get
a disheveled quilt
and put that on top of
it, and other fabrics,
and house paint, spray paint,
gold leaf, tar, you name it.
Oil stick-- everything
goes onto these.
And it became also, on
a very practical level,
it became a way for
me to work by myself
in the studio with
more immediacy,
because the other
projects I was doing
required the work of teams.
So on this one, I just
added extra sequin material
that I then draw directly
on the two tones, quilts,
with my finger.
And recently, I've
started to even pull--
go further into the
quilt, and starting
to mount them on
three-dimensional geometric
armatures.
So I'm really interested in
the patterning and the geometry
that's already
present in the quilt,
but now I'm making physical
geometries to then mount it on.
And they become what I
consider "hyper objects,"
because as you walk
and move around these,
they change their orientation.
It's almost like looking
at those old origami tricks
when you used to fold it and
mess around with your hands
and got different shapes.
And to give you an
idea of the scale,
you can see one right there
and a person in the background.
These are fairly large.
Like, particularly, this one is
over 10 feet from tip to tip.
And so from top to bottom
is a little over four feet.
And in the background is
another large wall drawing.
And this is also done with
two-toned sequined material.
So I'm mounting the material
directly on the wall
and then literally
drawing with my finger
by pulling the silver
sequins into visibility.
So you get a high
contrast drawing.
And then on the
ground are sculptures
that I've made, right here,
that feel to be African-esque,
but they're actually made
in my studio in Harlem.
And they're covered with tar.
But the idea is that if
these power objects really do
have that type of auratic
power coming from them,
what would it look like?
What would the spirit look like?
And in this case,
you see the shadow,
and it leads up
to these figures.
These figures--
this image was taken
from a protest in
San Francisco in 1969
led by the Black Panthers.
And the interesting thing
is when this show opened up,
I was literally on my
way to the opening,
and a friend wrote to me.
She texted me.
She said, do you know
you have a picture
of my father on your wall?
I was like, what do you mean?
And she's like, well, my
kids ran in here and say,
there's Granddad.
And I look at the piece,
and that's my father.
So it turns out, this guy
right here is my friend's dad.
My friend Tangia Murray,
this is George Murray.
And so she wrote to him and
sent him the picture, created
a thread, and by the time
I got to the gallery,
he's sending me a
whole litany of what
was going on that day,
what was being discussed.
That's Bobby Seale right here.
This is a new
recruit right here.
So it was this very
interesting moment once again,
considering that these
objects open themselves
up to what I'm
thinking is a history
but actually, once again,
it's a living history.
So I'm just showing you
a couple of more examples
of just working with
monumental scale figure works.
So taking the notion
of-- the idea of a power
object and a fetish
object, if you will,
and really turning it into
a red leather fetish figure.
And this sort of
speaks for itself.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Come on, kid,
you're coming with me.
- Halt!
- Hold your fire!
- No!
[GUNSHOT]
- You kids get out
of this area now.
Move!
[GUNSHOT]
[SIREN]
- It's not easy to take
when somebody you look up to
keeps putting you down.
Kids have learned
you got to be careful
who you put on a pedestal.
What comes up might
come down, like on you.
[END PLAYBACK]
It's complicated.
[LAUGHTER]
So I was referencing classic--
classical sculptures recently.
That became a new
interest of mine,
and really getting back to
the basic forms of sculpture.
And the Laocoon
has been considered
one of the greatest achievements
in artistic history.
Many of you know this.
It's the piece that's
in the Vatican, right?
It's in Vatican City, and
it is the priest, Laocoon,
and his two sons being
attacked by these tremendously
large snakes.
These snakes were sent
by the goddess Athena
to kill the boy--
the kids, the sons--
as well as the priest.
This was her way
of punishing him
because he warned the Romans
about the invading Greeks--
the Trojans about
the invading Greeks.
So this was her way of
punishing him because she
protects the Greeks.
So that's the Laocoon basically.
Now the Laocoon story gets
very diffuse after that.
There's other versions where
he was attacked by Poseidon.
There's other versions
where he was attacked
by any number of
deities, but always
for the same thing, sort
of being the message bearer
that nobody else
wanted to listen to,
so he had to get punished
for bearing-- you know,
trying to save people.
And that's essentially
what Fat Albert's job was.
Many of you are probably too
young to remember Fat Albert.
But some of you are not too
young to remember Fat Albert.
All of you are familiar
with Bill Cosby
in one way or the other.
And somehow, this became
a weird conflation
of several things happening.
This was actually a
very visceral reaction,
the creation of this piece.
And it was partly reacting
to our initial discovery of--
well, it wasn't even discovery,
because Bill Cosby's been
accused since the '60s--
but it was when, recently, there
was a lot more media attention
to the things that he had done.
But there was also
the convergence
of all of the killing of
black bodies-- black men,
particularly-- by the police.
And this piece was
a result of that.
In fact, I call it
Laocoon, Fatal Bert.
You can work that out
if you write it down.
And what you're
looking at is a--
from the ground to the
top of his backside
is around 15 feet on
the one to the left.
I've done two versions.
One, if he were standing,
would be 30 feet tall.
The other one would
be 15 feet tall.
And he's on a pump, so when
you walk into the space,
you see the body deflating
and then gasping and getting
another breath.
It's a very strange piece.
Using the cartoon
reference makes
people think that
it's about humor,
but it's not necessarily
a humorous piece.
It's actually really about a
moment when, in my impression,
we had a lot of icons and ideals
as African-American people that
were all falling apart at once,
or being attacked at once.
And that's sort of where
the piece came from.
There's the obvious.
There's the red,
white, and blue.
There's the reference to
pop culture, and so on.
But by sort of grouping this
with the idea of the Laocoon,
it was also my entree into
doing more figurative work that
was really politically charged.
From that work I went into this.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[SHOTS]
[LARGE BLAST]
And so this series has
been called the BAM series.
And I mentioned that I'd been
collecting African sculptures
for several years.
And I was, once again,
living in Germany.
And I was looking at my
phone, and every few days, I
was seeing somebody else
being harassed or killed.
And it's not that
it was news for me.
I mean, I grew up knowing
that black people were
getting killed all the time.
But this was the first time
where the whole world saw it
simultaneously, because
of the technology.
Everyone has their phone.
Everyone's got a news feed,
and we're all seeing this.
So no longer are black
people crying wolf.
Now we were justified
in a lot of the things
we'd been thinking
and concerned about.
So I thought, the only
way to really express
how I was feeling about
it was to literally take
the objects that I had
coveted for so long
and then put them out there
and sculpt them ballistically.
So I started to dip
them in brown wax, which
you can see on this figure.
And this was my way of getting
rid of all their discernible
features.
Often when you read
a police report,
you hear a really
basic description.
"He was 6 feet tall.
He had a hoodie and some jeans."
That's, like,
everybody in Harlem.
So I started to make these
look like, oh, you know,
I can't tell them apart,
that kind of look.
And then I took them
to a shooting range
and literally sculpted them
with different caliber weapons.
Different guns leave
different impact on the body.
And then I would
take those remnants
and then cast them in bronze.
And I did a series
of around 14 or 15
that were one to one scale.
So they were at the same
size as their original.
And they're each named
after a different victim.
And then I was
later commissioned
by the Equal Justice Initiative
in Montgomery, Alabama.
This is a new museum that just
opened up last year, 2018.
And it basically goes
through the four stages
of black experience here
in the U.S. Abduction
from Africa, terrorism
through slavery
and the Jim Crow
South, Civil Rights,
and then finally, the
criminal justice system.
And that's what the Equal
Justice Initiative, EJI,
that's exactly what
their charge is to do,
is help people who are
getting discriminated
against in the legal
system-- not just black,
but people who do not have the
means to defend themselves.
And they have an
incredible success rate
of saving people from
torturous prison terms,
as well as death penalty.
So Bryan Stevenson asked
me to make this one.
And this is a nine foot version.
And this is at the
end of the museum.
So after your
experience and learning
about all these different
aspects of the experience,
this is the last thing you
see that sort of punctuates
the journey through the museum.
And when I display these,
usually the sculpture
is far away from the video.
The video may even be in
a totally different room,
somewhere down the hall.
The audio is more important.
You hear the
gunshots everywhere.
And you don't know where
they are, until you finally
see the video.
But before that moment
you probably have already
encountered the
sculpture, and you
can tell that those bullets
might be somehow coinciding
with the bodily harm you see
done on the figures themselves.
And then recently, I've started
to take another step going back
into--
now this is the
notion of traditional
or classical African
sculpture and
traditional European sculpture.
And I've literally been
making a body of work
that I call chimeras, where I'm
sort of mashing them together.
So in this particular
case, there's
the Greco-Roman-esque body
type and then the African torso
and head on top of that.
This piece is called
St. Marvelous,
stands around 4
and 1/2 feet tall,
and weighs probably
around 600 pounds.
And this was the work that
came out of my time living
in Rome, doing the
[INAUDIBLE] Rome for one year.
And I was going back and
forth to northern Italy
where the quarries are and
working with a specific foundry
to mine certain marbles and
then to make these pieces from.
This one is called
A Love Supreme.
And these are usually
done in separate pieces.
It's as if the underlying
body or face or bust
is being inhabited by the mask.
And a further reference
in this work is--
I mentioned that I lived
in Japan for three years.
I've always been very fascinated
by Noh performance and Noh
theater.
And one of the
aspects of Noh theater
is that there are these
archetypes of masks.
There's several
that are archetypes.
So every artisan who
makes a mask for Noh
theatrical performance
is making a mask
based on one of these originals.
They don't really deviate
too much from the original.
On the back of
the mask, however,
is where they can do
their own artistry.
That's where they sort of
put their own creative vision
into the back.
And the only person who
really sees the back
is the person who's wearing it.
And we often think of
masks as being something
to conceal or to
hide, but in Noh, it's
actually considered to be
the thing that brings out
the true spirit of
the person wearing it,
because they no longer have to
go through the visage they're
given, but they go
through this archetype
that they can now animate.
So this is another
piece right here.
The body of this
one is Spartacus.
We all know Spartacus as
a rebel, enslaved person.
The original form
is in the Louvre.
But he's in a
b-boy stance, and--
I didn't make this up.
This is how Spartacus stands.
He's in a b-boy stance.
I guess it's a thing.
And this one here is actually
sort of like a twin figure.
Twins are particularly
strong spirits.
This twin actually happens
to be a spirit-eater.
And it is on a stylized
version of a sort
of classic Greco-Roman
female bust.
So the gender doesn't
matter of these.
I put the male figures on
female figures and vice versa.
Some of them don't have a
gender in the first place,
so that becomes
sort of irrelevant.
It's more about
the cohabitation,
the awkward cohabitation,
of the host body.
This is a pink
Portuguese marble.
This piece is called The Caress.
Oops.
And lastly, I'm just
going to talk a little bit
about Moon Medicin.
I know we mentioned it briefly,
but I have a whole performative
side of my practice that now
is in the form of a band called
Moon Medicin, of which I am
the leader and the keyboardist
and costume designer and
video director and so on.
But I work with an incredibly
talented group of people.
Martin Luther is my
lead singer guitarist.
He was formerly with The Roots
and was in the last Julie
Taymor film.
Jahi Sundance is my
DJ, who is also on tour
with Robert Glasper right now.
Mark Hines does all
the technical things,
drum programming and so on.
We have a drummer named
Swiss Chris, who's also
part of John Legend's outfit.
And my bass player is a
gentleman named André Cymone,
who was Prince's original bass
player from Prince's original
band, from the late
'70s to the mid '80s.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
(SINGING) Face
down in the river.
SANFORD BIGGERS: And
this is an example
of the type of
performances we do.
(SINGING) Face
down in the river.
Bang bang [INAUDIBLE]
like the fourth of July.
It was a hot night out on
the streets, some music
for the [INAUDIBLE] heat.
Don't start [INAUDIBLE]
looking all around,
money-making machine.
It's a rat race, live and
let die, fighting the decay
for my piece of
the pie. 'Cause I
feel the city's trying
to squeeze me out.
And it's times like these
I had to stand my ground.
Or I'll be face
down in the river.
I'm praying for you.
[END PLAYBACK]
SANFORD BIGGERS: So that's
just a very quick, quick, quick
intro to that.
I would like to put a
little something longer on,
but I just want
to check for time,
so we can have some
Q and A. OK, cool.
This is us at Lincoln
Center a few years ago.
Can we get a little more volume?
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]
(SINGING) Dance, sucker.
Dance, sucker.
Meet me on the equinox
while we dance.
So much blue, so
much beauty, so much
used and misused and abused.
So we dance.
You the type to make slaves.
We the type to free 'em.
We dance.
Changing faces every night,
we call them how we see them.
So we dance.
Dance, sucker.
We dance!
On the equinox.
Yes, we dance.
You ain't never had to suffer.
You ain't felt that strain.
Daddy bought your life.
It came with your last name.
Yet you partyin' and drinkin',
tryin' to kill the pain.
So you dance, sucker.
The rhythm is living.
We, yes, we dance.
Some dance with [INAUDIBLE].
Dance, bitches.
[INAUDIBLE]
And quit expecting me to jump
every time your fingers snap.
What's elevated to your
ranks is really just a trap.
Nah, baby, we ain't had to
go to school to learn that.
We bought into the pipe dream,
now we want our money back.
So we dance, sucker.
Meet me on the equinox.
We dance.
Oh, yes, we dance.
Open up your mind and
turn your opinion off.
And dance, sucker.
[APPLAUSE]
[BIG BAND MUSIC]
[END PLAYBACK]
SANFORD BIGGERS: OK.
Do we have any questions?
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: Sanford,
the text from--
the dancing text right
there, was that your text?
SANFORD BIGGERS: No, that
was improvised that night
by Martin Luther.
Yep.
But the video-- the
video was actually
made by a director named
Pierre [? Benou. ?]
And he did that for a video
for another person who also
performs with us, Imani Uzuri.
And we were hoping she was
going to join us that night,
but she couldn't at the last
minute, so we had to improvise.
So that was him,
just sort of riffing.
And I also look at that footage,
once again, as a found object.
So it's a way of using imagery
that we may be familiar with,
but putting it in a new context.
They're going to want you
to speak into the mic.
AUDIENCE: With your power
objects, what kind of response,
or like, what kind
of things do you
want the people seeing your
art to think about, or how
would you like them
to respond to it?
SANFORD BIGGERS: There's
no one particular way.
It's several things that
I do want to happen.
Whether they happen, you know,
once it's out the studio,
who knows?
But first is seduction,
first and foremost.
I'm a formalist.
I like the objects and the
work to bring people in.
The next thing is to
then parse through,
what are you seeing, what
do you think this is about,
and then what hints
am I giving you
that it's probably about
many other things as well?
And in a perfect world,
if you're seeing it
with someone else, they
have a different opinion,
and you share those opinions.
And that way you get
deeper into the work,
but you also get deeper into
understanding how other people
view the same world we live in.
AUDIENCE: First off, thank
you so much for coming.
So I mostly make hip
hop music, but I've just
gotten into painting recently.
And what I've found is that
my music informs my painting,
and my painting
informs my music.
And I feel like--
I don't want to speak
for you, but in terms
of the presentation,
I sort of got, like,
between Moon Medicin and the
chimeras-- the mask is sort
of this prevailing
theme that I see
as sort of connecting
the musical and perhaps
the performative or
the installation.
SANFORD BIGGERS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Can you speak to
that process at all, perhaps?
SANFORD BIGGERS: It's
taken a long time
to try to figure some
of these things out.
Unfortunately, probably
the time I started showing,
and definitely the
time when I was
being educated as
a student, I was
told that you had
to make a decision.
You had to be a painter or
a sculptor or a musician.
You couldn't be any
combination of those things.
And I knew that was BS
when I first heard it,
but that was the prevalent
attitude at the time.
By the time I myself was
going to grad school,
I went to the Art
Institute of Chicago
because they were
boasting of having
an interdisciplinary program.
So that's why, once I
got in as a painter,
I actually turned to
sculpting and video and sound.
Most programs operate
like that now,
but there was a while
that things were really
sort of sectioned off.
But I think the idea of
the found object, patchwork
like the patchwork quilts,
sampling, all of that
go hand in hand.
So when I say I have a
non-hierarchical approach,
as you could tell, I have a lot
of research based on the things
that I use.
But now I've done so
much of that research
and made so many objects, now
I'm just putting them together,
mashing them
together, to see what
I learned from them without
being too prescriptive of what
they're supposed to be.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
My name is [INAUDIBLE].
I'm-- thank you so
much for being here.
SANFORD BIGGERS: My pleasure.
AUDIENCE: --so much
for being here.
I want to talk to you
about collaboration.
So it seems like
a lot-- oh, sorry.
It seems like a
lot of your-- you
do work by yourself
in your studio alone.
But some of your
larger scale projects
require a team of people.
Like, how do you
find those people?
What do you value
in a collaborator?
SANFORD BIGGERS: First of all--
yeah.
First of all, we got a
vibe, first and foremost.
I can't work with people
that I don't get along
with because the
creative process is
a nasty process sometimes.
So you have to be able
to have somebody that
can handle the mood
swings and the uncertainty
and the risk-taking and
still be excited to do it.
So that's first and foremost.
So I usually end up meeting my
people through other people.
I don't cold call too much.
But I find also just networking
and meeting people, you
start to find people
that you like.
And then years pass,
and you're like,
let me check on that person.
And you find out
they actually have
something that could help you
with a project you're already
working on.
It happens all the
time, especially
in a place like New York.
I'm sure it happens
here, because you
have so many different
creative people around,
is that next thing you know,
you're making something.
But I also find it good to
sort of know what you're doing
and know your relationship
to the project,
so that you can explain
that to your collaborators,
so there's no problems once
things are out in the world,
because you can't control
them once they're out.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
Hey, Sanford.
My name is [? Romel, ?]
big fan of your work
for a really, really,
really long time.
SANFORD BIGGERS: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: I actually had
a friend of mine send you
an email, [? Dina ?]
[? Amsterdam. ?]
SANFORD BIGGERS: Oh?
AUDIENCE: Like, three years ago.
SANFORD BIGGERS: Dina?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
SANFORD BIGGERS: Oh my god.
AUDIENCE: But I never
responded after we connected,
because I was too shy.
But I would just like
to ask, because I
know a lot of students
here who are making work.
They're kind of in
this space now where
there's so much great
stuff to look at,
and there's so many
different ways to do it.
And it's really intimidating.
And so what are, like, some
of the big challenges that you
faced early on, and some of the
big challenges you face now?
And maybe, you
know, just some ways
that you've accounted or dealt
with the difficulty of pursuing
things and being
accountable for things
outside of your own
context and all that stuff.
SANFORD BIGGERS:
It's a good question.
The problems I had then, I
still think several of them
are problems I still have.
Let's see, so we already
talked about collaboration.
But there's-- like you said,
there's so much to choose from,
so many things happening.
You sometimes have
to put blinders on,
so that you're not swayed
every five seconds.
This is something
that students also
have to learn too,
particularly grad students.
You're getting a lot of
good input from people.
You're getting a lot of
bad input from people.
You have to be able to
discern what is what.
And that's how you
start to develop
yourself and your
character as a creator.
But that takes time.
And actually, it
never really ends.
That goes on forever because,
you know, it's a wavy road.
So sometimes you
have to reassess.
I also think it's good
for creators to be nimble.
So you might put
the blinders on,
but you also do have
to be perceptive enough
to know when things
are changing and how
you want to either address
that or not address that.
I believe our actions
are political.
So even if you don't
make politicized work,
they're decisions you're
making creatively that do fall
into certain camps,
and they fall
into your own creative ethos.
So I think it's important to
know that and be true to that
and figure that out.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Oh.
Here.
Hi.
Hi.
I'm [INAUDIBLE].
I really resonate with your idea
of living history and the power
objects, because I
think most people--
sorry, not going to
go too long-winded--
but most people don't
recognize that they're
active participants in history.
They just think, or like most
of the folks I interact with,
believe history is just
something that happens to them,
not something they
participate in.
And I'm second-generation
Cambodian diaspora,
and I find that most of the
artifacts, material artifacts,
I can access my history for, are
not within my physical realm.
But most people don't recognize
those are still living objects.
Like, I'll go to a Paris Museum,
pray in front of an object,
and make a bunch of French
people uncomfortable.
But I guess I'm
interested in sort
of the research you do
in delving into a very
specific historical artifact.
And that's something I'm
trying to undertake right now.
But I think, could you
speak to, perhaps, like--
SANFORD BIGGERS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Understanding,
like, researching an object so
far as to understand its power,
without getting too blinded
enough to, like, leverage
what you understand.
SANFORD BIGGERS: It would take
me too long to find an example.
But some of the earliest works
I did were these dance floors--
large, hand-carved
dance floors that
were fashioned after
Buddhist mandalas.
And back to that
research notion,
when I started to get deeper
into the research of mandalas,
it turns out that
sometimes monks
don't even have to really
draw or depict the mandala.
They know the pattern.
And they can dance or
move around in circles
and create the mandala
out of thin air.
I grew up as a break
dancer as well.
So these dance
floors that I made,
I usually had a
video camera above it
and would invite
people to break dance
on it, thinking about their
circular movements mirroring
the circles on the
mandala, and through that,
having some type of
transcendent moment.
But when I realized
that the mandala itself
didn't have to be
physical, it totally
changed the way I
approached several things.
And this idea of history being
living, worshipping or giving
obeisance to that object
in a museum is one thing.
But what you take with you out
of there is the living part.
So however you put
that back in the world
really is a transferal of
energy from that object.
So in that process, you are
representing the object.
So I think that's also
a living history too.
You're totally right, we
are all active participants.
And there really is no history.
There's only now
and how you see it.
So that's once again about
perspective, I think.
AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
