Calenda – big ass bang

source: sanfordbiggers

Sanford Biggers, an LA native currently working in NYC, 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 an equally syncretic creative approach, he makes works or “vignettes” that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual.

The significance of Biggers’ work within contemporary society has been celebrated through numerous solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center and Mass MoCA. He has participated in prestigious residencies and fellowships including: American Academy in Berlin, Germany, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California; ARCUS Project Foundation, Ibaraki, Japan; and the Art in General/Trafo Gallery Eastern European Exchange in Budapest, Hungary. He has been a fellow of the Socrates Sculpture Park Residency, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views AIR Program, the Eyebeam Atelier Teaching Residency, the Studio Museum AIR Program, the P.S. 1 International Studio Program, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency.

Sanford Biggers’ installations, videos, and performances have appeared in venues worldwide including the Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, the Whitney Museum and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia. The artist’s works have been included in several notable exhibitions such as: Prospect 1/New Orleans Biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, Performa 07 in NY, the Whitney Biennial, and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He also has a solo survey of his work at the Brooklyn Museum and a major installation at Mass MOCA, both slated for late 2011.

Biggers has won several awards including: The Creative Time Travel Grant, Creative Capital Project Grant, New York Percent for the Arts Commission, Art Matters Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Award in performance art/multidisciplinary work, the Lambent Fellowship in the arts, the Pennies From Heaven/ New York Community Trust Award, Tanne Foundation Award, Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award Grant, James Nelson Raymond Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Camille Hanks-Cosby Fellowship.

Biggers is Affiliate Faculty at the Virginia Commonwealth University Sculpture and Expanded Media program and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s VES Department in 2009. He is presently Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Visual Arts program.
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source: gnomemag

Calenda (Big Ass Bang!) (2004) resembles the burst of energy and matter present during the Big Bang, and it reads like a map viewers must follow, showing us where to step and turn. Calenda is a branch of martial arts that is practiced in the Caribbean and began in Africa. The form traveled with slaves to America, where it may have become a dance that involved codes hidden in its moves. Sweet Funk itself is full of concealed information that becomes apparent when given a second look. By allowing his sculptures and videos to hold more than one meaning, Sanford Biggers doesn’t close off interpretation of his work. His mixture of past and present create a landscape where things are in a state of change; his well-worked symbols are gaining new identities. Sweet Funk takes what we already know and gives us something new to think about.
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source: parqmag

Stanfford Biggers é um artista norte ame­ri­cano que tem tra­ba­lhado sobre os este­ro­ti­pos da cul­tura afri­cana nos EUA. Uma retros­pec­tiva no novo museu de Brooklyn Museum em Nova Iorque que junta con­junto de 13 peças acaba por ser uma opor­tu­ni­dade para com­pre­en­der uma jovem per­curso que que se baseia nessa pre­o­cu­pa­ção de com­pre­en­der como a herança e os sím­bo­los de raça informa a cul­tura con­tem­po­râ­nea americana.