Multifaceted Artist Biggers Dodges Simple Interpretations

Two large pieces of paper face one another in artist Sanford Biggers’ studio at Harvard. On one wall hangs the sketch of a cross-section of a slave ship (“I have no idea what that’s about,” Biggers says). On the other, a piece of brown wrapping paper lists some of Biggers’ current projects: a multi-venue installation in Philadelphia that will trace locations from the Underground Railroad, a sculpture and floor design for a new high school in the Bronx, a series of dance vignettes based on a performance Biggers presented to the Dalai Lama.

It’s no surprise that Biggers has been called a sculptor, a performance artist, a video artist, and an installation artist—or that his art has been qualified as both Dada and post-minimalist. His work consciously eludes labels. It is at once formal and multidisciplinary, static and interactive. “I am interested in making stuff that I, and other people, can’t categorize,” he says. And as Biggers engages the viewer with innovative forms, he asks them to consider the very basis with which they understand his art.

Born in Los Angeles in 1970 and currently based in New York, Biggers has exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Whitney and the Tate Modern. This semester, he teaches two Visual and Environmental Studies classes as a visiting professor: “Objects and Environments” and “Spatial Poetics.” In addition, as the Marshall S. Cogan Visiting Artist in the Office for the Arts public art program, Biggers is conducting research for a temporary installation on the Harvard campus next semester. The project, he says, is “top secret” for now, but it will likely include participation from members of the Harvard community.

Interactive art is no new endeavor for Biggers. The objects in Biggers’ art are only part of the final product; only when they interact with their environment can his art come to completion. “The space becomes charged by the exchange between viewer and object,” Biggers says. References to “power objects”—objects enlivened with energy—abound in his work.

In his installation, “Mandala of the Bodhisattva II,” Biggers fashioned a floor after a Buddhist mandala, a spiritual emblem, and then asked break dancers to perform on it. In “Hip Hop Ni Sasagu (In Fond Memory of Hip-Hop),” he staged a chorus of orin, traditional singing bowls, in a Japanese temple. These orin were made from melted hip-hop jewelry. “My artwork provides a locus for the interaction and the evolution of culture—our experiences, our communication about it, how it affects us when we leave the room,” Biggers says.

And as the object interacts with its environment, it also interacts with the viewer, who is both a witness and a participant. “I like to put the onus of the experience on the viewer,” he explains.

Such interaction is both physical and intellectual. His 2001 installation, “Sticky Fingers,” features a large bed covered in a faux-fur blanket—evocative, Biggers says, of contemporary representations of “pimp” culture. Viewers were invited to sit down or lie on the bed. By the time the viewer-turned-participant gets up to leave the gallery, “The work,” Biggers says, “has touched them. Literally.”

At the same time, Biggers’ pieces demand a mental engagement from the viewer. The headboard used in “Sticky Fingers” was a large Afro Pick entirely covered in leather, its top curled into a Black Power fist. Viewers interpret the work depending on their prior understanding of these symbols and their implicit meanings. “We only understand anything from our experiences,” Biggers says.

And when viewers bring their diverse experiences to their interactions with artwork, the result is often surprising, even for Biggers. He recounts one installation of a boat-like structure filled with books, which, for him, played with the metaphor of a slave ship. Instead, many viewers saw the piece as a metaphor for freedom. “They found meanings that I did not even know,” Bigger says. “I realized that it was more interesting to have a multivalent operation where the viewer is accountable for part of the meaning.”

Accordingly, Biggers sees his work as questioning rather than didactic.

“I can’t assume that everyone is going to get the same thing from a work,” he says. “The work is open. Pointed, but open.”

—Staff writer Madeleine M. Schwartz can be reached at mschwart@fas.harvard.edu.