An LA native working in NYC, Sanford Biggers creates artworks that integrate film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music, and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip-hop, Buddhism, politics, identity, and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. Through a multi-disciplinary formal process and a syncretic creative approach, he makes works that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual.
Biggers’s art frequently references African-American ethnography, hip-hop music, Buddhism, African spirituality, Indo-European Vodoun, jazz, Afrofuturism, urban culture, and icons from Americana. He claims to place “no hierarchy on chronology, references or media”[ and his work has been characterized by meditation and improvisation. He says his themes are “meant to broaden and complicate our read on American history.” He also uses syncretism to highlight the interconnectedness of seemly disparate cultural practices. In order to make the viewer an active element, Biggers often turns his sculptures into performances.