Code Switch

Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch is the first survey of quilt-based works—inspired, in part, by the rich creative legacies of African American quilters—produced by the American interdisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers (born 1970). The works, part of Biggers’s Codex series, consist of mixed-media paintings and sculptures done directly on or made from antique American quilts. Through this process, Biggers produces works that signal the original quilters’ creative intent and present new layers of meaning through his artistic interventions. Reflecting on the original quilts and his interventions, Biggers notes that, “Some have already been altered and re-contextualized by subsequent owners and I see myself as a late collaborator, contributing to their history and function in this present moment.” The exhibition consists of thirty-three quilt-based works dating from 2012 to 2020 and two video works dating from 2000 and 2014.

Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch is co-organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, and co-curated by Dr. Andrea Andersson and Antonio Sergio Bessa.

Sanford Biggers’ work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while also examining the contexts that bore them. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often-overlooked cultural and political narratives from American history.