Sanford Biggers

“Sweet Funk” was a thematic introspective featuring Blossom, a piano growing out of a tree. Another piano piece, Kalimba, consists of an upright piano cut in half and rotated, with a tall wall between the pieces. Both halves still can play, so two people can sit down, play a duet, and walk away without having seen each other. […T]he idea is to communicate with a stranger strictly through music and vibrations between a wall. It can be an anonymous duet. “Sweet Funk” also included Passage, a found concrete bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. Its shoulder span is about four and a half feet, and the height is around three feet. I discovered it in a junkyard in Virginia. Using black hair pomade, I made a mohawk on King’s head that goes down his forehead and down his lips. A spotlight on the bust casts a shadow of Barack Obama on an adjacent wall.

— Sanford Biggers, October 2012 interview with Jan Garden Castro, SCULPTURE