Sanford Biggers

Conceptual artist Sanford Biggers (b. 1970; Los Angeles, CA) explores the interplay of narrative, perspective, and history, examining the contexts that shape the present. Working across painting, sculpture, video, photography, mixed media, music, and performance, Biggers positions himself as an artistic intermediary, intervening in historical forms and reconfiguring often-overlooked aesthetic, cultural, historical, and political narratives. His practice draws on disparate influences, from Los Angeles graffiti culture and American folk traditions to Buddhism, African and European sculptural traditions, and the margins of history.
Biggers describes his process as “conceptual patchworking”—a method of transposing, combining, and juxtaposing ideas, forms, and genres to challenge traditional historiography, provenance, and official narratives. Recurring motifs such as pianos, trees, clouds, Cheshire Cat smiles, and lotus flowers become mutable signifiers, their meanings shifting through each encounter and transmission. His use of antique quilts and textiles, classical sculpture, and other historical forms further complicates distinctions between past and present, personal and collective memory, and cultural tradition and contemporary experience.
Biggers’ work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Walker Art Center, and National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others. His honors include the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Heinz Award for the Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and 2017 Rome Prize in Visual Arts. He was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and named a National Academician by the National Academy of Design. Biggers is also the creative director and keyboardist of Moon Medicin and a GRAMMY recipient for his contribution to Meshell Ndegeocello’s The Omnichord Real Book.