CODEX BY SANFORD BIGGERS

Dr. Matthew McLendon, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Codex features new work by Sanford Biggers, the 2010 Greenfield Prize Winner and Hermitage Retreat Artist, and opened at the Museum on March 30. Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Dr. Matthew McLendon, sat down with Sanford during the installation and spoke with him about the work displayed and his process.

Matthew McLendon: So, Sanford, how did you begin working with quilts?

Sanford Biggers: I first started working with quilts during a project that I did in Philadelphia called Hidden Cities (2009) where several artists were asked to do interventions at landmarks which were in disrepair or had been forgotten by history. I chose a sprawling project that went throughout the city but was focused on the Mother Bethel Church located on Lombard Street and then several locations identified as stops along the Underground Railroad located throughout the city. At the Mother Bethel Church, I hung eight quilts around the second story hanging down into the sanctuary, one of which I’ve included in the exhibition here at the Ringling (UGRR: US2.2, 2009).

MM: And of course quilts are related to the history of the Underground Railroad because they were used to signal stops along the way.

SB: Exactly.

MM: So why do you draw and paint on the quilts?

SB: Well, I wanted a way of making a direct intervention. I don’t sew, I’m not a quilter, so I went to what I do know which is paint. I have done some basic stitching and embroidery; I add other pieces of fabric to the quilts.

MM: You’re always discussed as an installation artist. Did you focus on painting during your training?

SB: Yes, actually I did my MFA at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in painting, but I did experiment with video and sound there, and I’ve been doing sculpture all along, too.

MM: That’s very interesting. So this is a return to your artistic roots in a way.

SB: Yes, in a way it is.

MM: The Art Institute has one of the important fiber arts programs in the country. Were you involved in that program at all?

SB: I was very interested in what the artists in the fiber arts program were doing. Many people looked at it as craft or ghettoized it as “women’s craft,” but I actually thought they were doing some of the most interesting work at The Institute at the time. Their work was very interdisciplinary. MM: The quilts in Codex are, of course, being repurposed which is an aspect of contemporary art that I am quite interested in at the moment. One of the artists I’ve been looking at is Nick Cave and his elaborate soundsuits made of found and repurposed objects. Was he at The Institute yet when you were a student?

SB: Nick wasn’t teaching there yet, but I knew of him and we did a studio visit. My first works at The Institute incorporated found objects.

MM: So again, with the repurposing and painting of quilts this is a return to form and incorporates both your roots as an artist and as an African-American. Where did the idea of using star or constellation maps as the basis for some of the designs come from?

SB: Well, the idea of Harriet Tubman as an astronaut, navigating from the south to the north via the stars. The first constellation map was in the Philadelphia project. I made an aerial view of the city that looked like a constellation chart and marked the stops on the Underground Railroad and then connected them like the stars on a constellation map. So I started to implement that same strategy and drawing constellations on the quilts and then those started to become dance notations that formed galaxies and constellations.

MM: Why dance notation?

SB: These are visual puns and dance notations because entertainment has always been a form of transcendence for Black people. In the United States it is an accepted form of achievement. There are subversive aspects as well that I have always been interested in. The slaves used dance as a form of communication unbeknownst to the masters. There is a mining of history, a deep cultural communicative history. So then one can “read” these histories in the quilts like a codex. That’s why the show is called Codex MM: You then blend these symbols with Buddhist imagery, why?

SB: It’s about transcendence. I use the lotus motif because the lotus grows from the muck of the pond bottom eventually breaking the surface of the water into the light—it transcends its beginnings.

MM: What do you hope to accomplish with this installation?

SB: Developing a visual vocabulary. There are several symbols that I’ve used in installations as three-dimensional objects and sculptures that I’ve embedded into these quilts. Reading them is like reading the codex, and I’m morphing some of those symbols in the quilts which can later have an off shoot into the installations. I can see in the future cutting up quilts and stitching different quilts together.

MM: Well, I imagine that will be quite controversial in the quilting world. However, if you take African-American quilts, and Caucasian quilts, and Native American quilts, and sew them together then the “patchwork” which is to symbolize America becomes a real embodiment of the mixing of cultures, or backgrounds, that is America—at least the America of today. In the history of the quilts themselves, they were of course segregated.

SB: It’s the Creolization of quilts?

MM: The Creolization of quilts—that’s quite a lovely phrase. I think we should end with that; it’s powerful. Thank you, Sanford, it’s been a pleasure.

SB: Thank you.