Studio visit
Sanford Biggers

The Harlem artist discusses futurism and traveling in time and space.
By T.J. Carlin

Could you talk a bit about the Somethin’ Suite, a musical variety show you presented at Performa 07?
I called the Somethin’ Suite an Afro-futurist minstrel show. It intentionally abjured blackface, though it did have whiteface, in the form of Imani Uzuri appearing as a “pickaninny geisha” singing an a capella interpretation of “Strange Fruit.”

Theatricality seems to be something that pervades all of your work.
Yes, I believe presence and theatricality are vital aspects of sculpture and installation. Through theatricality, I want to provoke the viewer to renegotiate time, place and context, even to interact. I take liberties in describing sculpture in the expanded field as performative by making the viewer an active element.

What sorts of things inform your approach to your art?
Most projects are driven by specific experiences in my life. Sometimes these experiences crystallize in very concrete and thematic pieces. Other times, I set up physical or conceptual cues and allow the work to be shaped by a specific process or collaboration. Most artists look backward to move forward. I’m more interested in working with simultaneity these days, placing no hierarchy on chronology, references or media.

I really like your drawings. Do you always keep a sketchbook?
I’ve always made drawings and collages and kept sketchbooks. I don’t know if there is any internal logic to my drawings, but that’s precisely what I enjoy about them. The immediacy and flexibility of drawing has always attracted me, and is well suited to the simultaneity I was referring to earlier.

You have quite an audio-editing station here. What role does music play in your life and studio?
Actually, that really relates to your last question. I grew up playing piano, mostly by ear, but when I started listening to more complicated music, like Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock, I couldn’t keep up so I began drawing pictures of them. [Laughs] I still use and compose music for many of my projects, like the interpretation of “Strange Fruit” in the Somethin’ Suite. I was just in Indonesia recording live gamelan music that I’m using to compose the score for an upcoming video project, entitled Shuffle, that will premiere in Berlin and New York this spring. But I’ve also done several music projects with performers such as Saul Williams, a.k.a. Niggy Tardust, Esthero, Martin Luther, Imani Uzuri and Rich Medina. Music may inform my work more than anything else.