Hospitality Design - November 2022 - 99

A Wiser Fool, part of the Chimera series,
fuses classic Greco-Roman figures with
African and diasporic objects
Overstood is inspired by a photo of a 1968 Black Panther
Party protest, with four larger-than-life figures looking
down on centuries of systemic disenfranchisement
Four small black figures are positioned a
foot or so away from the wall in Overstood
he remembers. Biggers wasn't arrested, but
the very next week those creative stirrings
were instead nurtured in the classroom,
when he enrolled in his high school's
advanced placement art off erings.
That Biggers so deſt ly glides between
such mediums as painting, sculpture, and
music is a testament, he believes, to his
early passion for hip-hop and the notion of
remixing that is embedded in the genre.
Found objects, for example, became central
to his compositions. " My artistic journey
has been about processing some of the
more academic and formal aspects of my
art education and then some of the more
renegade aspects of it and fi nding a way
to merge all of that, " he explains. " That
meld is represented metaphorically by the
materials I choose. "
During his time at Morehouse College in
Atlanta, Biggers was mentored by sculptor
Frank Toby Martin at sister institution
Spelman College, also in Atlanta, where
he competed against graduate students in
sculpture competitions. Studies in Italy
followed, as did a formative three-year-long
period in Japan, where he dove into origami
and ink paintings and designed the interiors
of a friend's cabaret.
That time spent in Asia was also critical
to Biggers' personal growth because he
discovered Buddhism there. Strains of
the religion's symbols, he notes, can be
seen in his work " in terms of patt erns and
circles, " including early performances that
showcased break dancers performing atop
large mandalas. A Buddhist philosophy
continues to guide his practice. Biggers
recognizes that more quiet experiences like
traveling and engaging in conversation,
absorbing thoughts that will later manifest
in his sketches and writings, are just as
valuable to producing art as an active dayinto-night
session at the studio.
Back in the U.S., Biggers bolstered his
education fi rst at the Maryland Institute
College of Art in Baltimore, then by dipping
into the worlds of fi lm, video, and sound at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Soon aſt er, residencies at the Studio
Museum in Harlem and MoMA PS1 lured
him to New York.
Along with recent exhibitions at the likes
of Wasserman Projects in Detroit, Beijing's
MASSIMODECARLO gallery, and the
Peter Marino Foundation in Southampton,
New York, Biggers has been consumed by
Of many waters, his monumental 24-footwide-by-16-foot-tall
outdoor sculpture for
the new Thom Mayne-designed building
at the Orange County Museum of Art in
Costa Mesa, California. Pulling from Codex,
Chimera, and Shimmer, his range of sequinhospitalitydesign.com
November 2022
099
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Hospitality Design - November 2022

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