was born in Los Angeles in 1970. He lives and works in New York.
Sanford Biggers’ work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current happenings while examining the contexts that bore them. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often-overlooked aesthetic, cultural, historical, and political narratives through his use of antique quilts and textiles, classical sculptures from around the world, sonic interventions, performances, and video.
Biggers describes his process as “conceptual patchworking,” a method of transposing, combining, and juxtaposing ideas, forms, and genres that challenge traditional historiography, provenance, and official narratives to create artworks for a future ethnography.
Biggers has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Morehouse College’s Bennie Trailblazer Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the 26th Heinz Award for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the 2017 Rome Prize in Visual Arts by the American Academy in Rome, among others. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
