Janet Biggs
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Janet Biggs is an American
visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...
, known for her work in
video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...
,
photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...
and interdisciplinary
performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
. Biggs lives and works in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. Biggs' work focuses on individuals in extreme landscapes or situations, such as the
Taklamakan desert The Taklamakan Desert ( ) is a desert in northwest China's Xinjiang region. Located inside the Tarim Basin in Southern Xinjiang, it is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains to the west, the Tian Shan range to the ...
of Western China, the
Horn of Africa The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
, the
Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...
, and the Mars Desert Research Station. Her work explores challenges faced by diverse groups including the Uighurs, Indonesian sulfur miners and Yemini refugees. In 2022, Biggs worked with
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...
and the Spencer museum. Reviews of her work have appeared in the ''New York Times'', the ''New Yorker, ArtForum, ARTNews, Art in America, Flash Art,'' and ''ArtReview''. Biggs was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
for Fine Arts in 2018.


Recent works

From September 2024 to January 2025, Janet Biggs participated in the CyberArts Exhibit at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia. This exhibition, organized by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, explores the intersection of cybersecurity and art, and features Biggs’ work alongside other artists engaging with technology and digital culture. In August, 2024, Biggs presented the video installation "Contra Naturam" at the ICEHOUSE Project Space in Sharon, Connecticut. This work, a collaboration with sight-impaired dancer Davian Robinson, is a three-channel video installation installed in a 10'x'10' icehouse. The piece, incorporating dancing by Robinson with images of ice boat racing, was created in response to Sharon native William F. Buckley's opinion that the blind should not be exposed to culture or nature. Biggs' work was presented at the 2021
Armory Show The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was organized by thAssociation of American Painters and Sculptors It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of the many exhibition ...
,
Javits Center The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, commonly known as the Javits Center, is a large convention center on Eleventh Avenue between 34th Street and 38th Street in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by architect James In ...
, New York City, from 9–12 September 2021. Her work was shown at a solo booth as part of "Focus", curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi. In addition to videos, Biggs' work includes multi-discipline performances, using videos, live music, actors, and artificial intelligence. Her newest work incorporates footage shot by Biggs at refugee camps in
Djibouti Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the east. The country has an area ...
, in Ethiopian badlands, and at Mars simulations in Utah and the Himalayas. She has trained in space medicine, equestrian vaulting and arctic kayaking. Beginning in 2020, Biggs, mathematician Agnieszka Międlar, and physicist Daniel Tapia Takaki, who leads the University of Kansas's (KU) team for the ALICE collaboration at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), collaborated on projects to explore questions in high energy physics, applying novel mathematical techniques to the production of video and performance. This group is a collaboration between Arts at CERN, the official arts program of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Integrated Arts Research Initiative (IARI) at the Spencer Museum of Art. Their collaborative project was described in "How to Do Things with SVD: Mathematical Tool-Sharing from Physics to Performative Research," published in the journal Leonardo, published by MIT Press. On April 8, 2021 Biggs presented a livestream performance, "
Singular Value Decomposition In linear algebra, the singular value decomposition (SVD) is a Matrix decomposition, factorization of a real number, real or complex number, complex matrix (mathematics), matrix into a rotation, followed by a rescaling followed by another rota ...
," emerging from this collaboration. This collaborative team went on to create an innovative video installation, titled "Collective Entanglements," which was presented at the
Spencer Museum of Art The Spencer Museum of Art is an art museum operated by the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. History In 1917, the Kansas City art collector Sallie Casey Thayer donated her collection of over seven thousand works of art, ...
at the University of Kansas (KU) in April, 2022. On 30 July 2020, Biggs created an experimental live online performance at Fridman Gallery in New York City. While Biggs directed remotely, singer and dancer Mary Esther Carter performed, accompanied by an
Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
entity named A.I. Anne, which was created by composer and music technologist Richard Savery. Also in July 2020, the Boca Raton Museum of Art presented a new installation by Biggs, "Solitary Acts." In June 2019, Biggs presented 'Overview Effect', an exhibition of new video work, at the Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York City. As part of this exhibition, Biggs' premiered "How the Light Gets In," a multi-media performance, at the Theater at the
New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...
. In December, 2018, Biggs had solo exhibitions and film screenings at the
Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre Museo may refer to: *Museum (2018 film), ''Museum'' (2018 film), Mexican drama heist film *Museo station, station on line 1 of the Naples Metro {{disambiguation ...
and the Museum of Science and the Cosmos in the
Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...
. In May 2018, Biggs was included in "Shots Across the Plane," at the Zurab Tsereteli Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 2017, the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, New York) presented "A Step on the Sun." Biggs' work has been presented in shows at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (June, 2018), the 17º Festival Internacional de la Imagen (group exhibition as part of art + tech festival) in Manizales Colombia, "Art & Coal" (Kunst & Kohle), a group exhibition spanning 17 museums in the Ruhr Valley), at the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl in Marl, Germany, "For a gentle song would not shake us if we had never heard a loud one" at the Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. and "Videos for a Stadium" at the University of Kentucky Art Museum (screening at the Commonwealth Stadium at University of Kentucky) Lexington, KY. Biggs was selected to be on Crew 181 of the Mars Desert Research Station, and has incorporated elements of space exploration in several of her latest works.


Exhibitions and screenings

Biggs has exhibited in solo shows and screenings at Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York City, Connersmith Gallery in Washington, DC, Barbara Polla's Analix Forever Gallery in Geneva, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn NY, and Galerie Anita Beckers in Frankfurt Germany. In June 2017, at David Lynch's Club Silencio in Paris, Biggs presented her performance piece, "Far From Home," which incorporated a live musical performance by
Rhys Chatham Rhys Chatham (born September 19, 1952) is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist (flutes in C, alto and bass, keyboard), primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orche ...
and a reading by Frank Smith with video of her work in a Yemeni refugee camp in Djibouti and at the Mars Desert Research Station. In 2015, the
Blaffer Art Museum Blaffer Art Museum is a non-collecting contemporary art museum located in the Arts District of the University of Houston campus. Housed in the university’s Fine Arts Building, it is part of the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. It was ...
in Houston, Texas, presented Biggs' ''Echo of the Unknown'', a multidimensional exhibition combining video, sound, and objects that explore the role of memory in the construction of identity. In conjunction with ''Echo of the Unknown'', Blaffer collaborated with more than a dozen UH colleges and Houston institutions on the Blaffer Art Museum Innovation Series, an ambitious slate of lectures, gallery talks and panel discussions, enhancing the exhibition's role as a catalyst for cross-disciplinary learning. In 2014 Biggs was exhibited in the First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias. The
Tampa Museum of Art The Tampa Museum of Art is located in Downtown Tampa, downtown Tampa, Florida. It exhibits modern and contemporary art, as well as Art in Ancient Greece, Greek, Ancient Rome, Roman, and Etruscan civilization, Etruscan antiquities. The museum open ...
presented a survey of Biggs' work in 2011. Biggs' video work has also been shown in solo exhibitions at
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (, MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex. Founded in 1964, it ...
, Glaskasten Marl Sculpture Museum (Marl, Germany), the Mint Museum (Charlotte NC), the Gibbes Museum of Art (Charlotte, NC), the McNay Museum (San Antonio, Texas), the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, NY), Videonale 13 (Bonn, Germany) and the
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) is a contemporary visual and performance arts venue located in a heritage-listed building in Perth, Western Australia. History 1896–1959: Schools The building at 53 James Street, Northbridge, James ...
. In 2012, Biggs' Arctic Trilogy was screened as part of the Environmental Film Festival at the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...
(Washington, DC). Biggs travelled to the far Arctic in 2009-2010, where she captured images of individuals' interaction with extremes environments above and below the ice. Biggs used this footage to create three videos, "The Arctic Trilogy." These videos were premiered at Ed Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea (New York City) in February 2011. This show was reviewed in the ''New York Times'' by Holland Carter. On July 14, 2009, ''Vanishing Point'' was screened at New York's River To River Festival. That same evening, Biggs' videos accompanied an ambient performance by Anthony Gonzalez of the band M83.


Recognition

Biggs was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
for Fine Arts in 2018. In 2016, Biggs was selected by
Lynn Hershman Leeson Lynn Hershman Leeson (née Lynn Lester Hershman; born June 17, 1941) is an American multimedia artist and filmmaker. Her work with technology and in media-based practices is credited with helping to legitimize digital art forms. Her interests inc ...
as part of ''ArtReview'' magazine's "Future Greats - the artists to look out for in 2016." Also in 2016, Biggs was named a Distinguished Alumni at
Moore College of Art and Design Moore College of Art & Design is a private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1848 by Sarah Worthington Peter as the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and was renamed the Moore College of Art & Design in 1989. ...
. The October 2015 ''Art In America'' featured an article written by Faye Hirsch on Biggs' work, with a focus on the Blaffer exhibition. ''ArtNew's'' April 2015 cover article "Art Made in Harm's Way" by Lily Wei featured Biggs' travels to Ethiopia's border conflict, where she filmed local Afar militia as they patrolled the Ethiopian/Eritrean border. In 2013 Biggs was awarded a la Napoule Art Foundation Riviera Residency, and in 2009 and 2010 she was selected for The Arctic Circle High Arctic Expedition residency. She received an Art Matters Project grant in 2010. Janet Biggs was a recipient of a
New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) serves to foster and advance the arts, culture, and creativity throughout New York State, according to its website. The goal of the council is to allow all New Yorkers to benefit from the contribution ...
grant in 2011 and 2009 through the New York Experimental Television Center. She has received additional funding grants from the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte and the Goodrich Foundation. In 2004 she received the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship, and received a painting fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
in 1989. ''Contemporary Magazine'' profiled Biggs in their March 2007 issue.


Commercial work

Biggs was commissioned by Puma to create a short film as part of their 2012 Films4Peace initiative. In 2006,
Hermès Hermès International S.A. ( , ) is a French Luxury goods, luxury fashion house established in 1837. It specializes in leather goods, silk goods, lifestyle accessories, home furnishings, perfumery, jewelry, watches and ready-to-wear. Since the ...
commissioned Biggs to create a work of art for their flagship New York store. Biggs installed 11 large monitors in the store's Madison Avenue windows, as well as photographs of equestrian-themed images.


Representation

Biggs works with Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York City, Hyphen-Hub, New York City, CONNERSMITH (Washington, DC), Analix Forever (Geneva, Switzerland), and Galerie Anita Beckers/blink video (Frankfurt, Germany).


References


External links


jbiggs.com - Janet Biggs' web siteJanet Biggs at Cristin Tierney Galleryvimeo.com/jbiggs- Janet Biggs on VimeoCONNERSMITH Gallery (Washington, DC)Gallery Anita Beckers - Blink Video (Frankfurt, Germany)Hyphen-Hub (New York, NY)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Biggs, Janet 1959 births Living people American video artists American women performance artists American performance artists American women video artists Artists from New York (state) Moore College of Art and Design alumni 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers 20th-century American women photographers 21st-century American women photographers