Concerned and Concerning: Sanford Biggers at Tufts

By Rachel Kubrick

BAM (Seated Warrior), 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen, and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.

Sanford Biggers has gained traction across the country for daring to mix disciplines, narratives, and cultures into multi-media work confronting the past and present of racism in America. The artist’s sculpture series, BAM (2015-2017), along with two video installations and three quilt-paintings, are now on display at the Tufts University Art Galleries. 

Upon entering the space, a tall, metallic figure confronts the viewer. It exhibits all the makings of what is recognizably a traditional sub-Saharan sculpture with its figural but abstracted form. What is very untraditional, however, is its bright, inorganic color and a chunk missing from its arm. The wall text reveals that the origin of this particular sculpture and the others in the exhibition are, in fact, African sculptures, each purchased during Biggers’ travels without definitive knowledge as to their authenticity. Biggers then poured over them with wax, riddled them with bullets at a shooting range, and cast them in bronze. The video installation Infinite Tabernacle (2017), an array of screens on a black carpet in the corner of the gallery, showcases this violent and jarring process. 

It is fairly simple to interpret the work’s connection to police brutality against African Americans. The sculptures are entitled For Jordan, For Terence, For Michael, and For Sandra, as in Jordan Edwards, Terence Crutcher, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland—black individuals who were shot by white police officers or perished in police custody in the past five years. These sculptures are undeniably powerful, memorializing black lives while evoking the senseless violence by which they were lost. The fact that this exhibition has traveled from the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis—the city where Michael Brown was shot, subsequently launching the Black Lives Matter movement into the spotlight— makes Biggers’ cause all the more potent.

One aspect of Biggers’ work, however, made it difficult for this reviewer to truly appreciate what he was trying to do with this show; I simply could not get past the destruction done to the African sculptures via Biggers’ process. These sculptures, reduced to a medium for the contemporary artist rather than displayed as priceless works of art in their own right, are identified as used, “whether of authentic or dubious origin.” 

BAM (for Jordan), 2017; BAM (for Michael), 2016; BAM (for Terence), 2016; BAM (for Sandra), 2016. Courtesy the artist, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen, and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.

This disinterest in verifying the authenticity of African artworks marked for modification or even destruction is upsetting yet not uncommon amongst works with racial overtones. While incorporating authentic sculpture is undoubtedly effective (one is reminded of Ai Weiwei’s self-explanatory triptych Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn), why must we destroy art of the past to create work for the present? Other artists have used casts of African sculpture to equal effect (see: Theaster Gates’ Amalgam including bronze casts of African masks). Biggers, however, negates any maintenance of a sculpture’s original integrity by having it shot at before casting it for the finished piece. 

It is important to note Biggers’ evident knowledge of African art history, as he aims to turn the sculptures into “power figures,” a type of sculpture indigenous to the Congo. But why can’t these works be powerful in their own right? While it is clear that this process is necessary to his concept, the repeated practice of damaging potentially authentic, and therefore potentially valuable, artwork as a form of political commentary is concerning. 

It is not my intention to distract from the critical themes of police brutality and racism which Biggers conveys through his art. There is no doubt that he is an evocative and skilled artist-activist. Furthermore, it is valid to assert that my position is problematically rooted within a Western understanding of what constitutes an artwork and its need for preservation. But Biggers’ work begs the question: would this pattern go unnoticed if it were European sculptures being damaged for the sake of contemporary practice?

Infinite Tabernacle, 2017. Courtesy the artist, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen, and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.

Sanford Biggers continues at the Tufts University Art Galleries (40 Talbot Ave., Medford, MA) through December 15th, 2019. 

Photos courtesy of the author Rachel Kubrick