American, b. 1970
Biggers creates hybridized monumental works from stone and bronze, to textiles and paint. Straddling visual arts and music, he fronts a multimedia concept band, Moon Medicin. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often-overlooked cultural and political narratives from American history. His work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while examining the contexts that bore them.
Major works include the recent commission Oracle. This bronze sculpture and multimedia installation at Rockefeller Center traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Codeswitch, a survey of his Codex series of mixed-media paintings and sculptures made with antique quilts was presented at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx; the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville. He has had solo exhibitions at The Phillips Collection, SCAD Museum of Art, Chazen Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. In his BAM series, Biggers seeks to memorialize and honor victims of police violence in the U.S., to combat historical amnesia. This series is composed of fragments of wooden African statues dipped and veiled with thick wax and then ballistically ‘resculpted.’ Biggers then casts the remnants into bronze, a historically noble and weighty medium. Each sculpture is named and dedicated after unarmed victims who have died at the hands of law enforcement.
Among Biggers awards: the Morehouse College Bennie Achievement Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; the Studio Museum’s Lea K. Green Memorial; the 26th Heinz Award for the Arts; New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame in 2019; American Academy of Arts and Letters Award; Rome Prize in Visual Arts.
Major works include the recent commission Oracle. This bronze sculpture and multimedia installation at Rockefeller Center traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Codeswitch, a survey of his Codex series of mixed-media paintings and sculptures made with antique quilts was presented at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx; the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville. He has had solo exhibitions at The Phillips Collection, SCAD Museum of Art, Chazen Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. In his BAM series, Biggers seeks to memorialize and honor victims of police violence in the U.S., to combat historical amnesia. This series is composed of fragments of wooden African statues dipped and veiled with thick wax and then ballistically ‘resculpted.’ Biggers then casts the remnants into bronze, a historically noble and weighty medium. Each sculpture is named and dedicated after unarmed victims who have died at the hands of law enforcement.
Among Biggers awards: the Morehouse College Bennie Achievement Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; the Studio Museum’s Lea K. Green Memorial; the 26th Heinz Award for the Arts; New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame in 2019; American Academy of Arts and Letters Award; Rome Prize in Visual Arts.
