Sanford Biggers Instagram – Join me at @bronxmuseum’s Gala and Art Auction on March 18th where I am honored to be celebrated by community and presented with the Art + Social Justice Award by my dear friend @juliemehretu 🙏🏿 Tickets are linked in my bio 🔗 This event is more than a full circle moment. The “Mandala of the B-Bodhisattva II” (made in collaboration with @davidellisstudio, 2000) was first showcased at the Bronx museum in their 2001 exhibition, ‘One Planet Under a Groove’, curated by @franklinsirmans and #LydiaYee. It returned to the museum in 2020 during my solo show ‘Codeswitch’ and holds so much of my personal history and spiritual journey. My three years in Japan (1992–95) were a serious spiritual awakening—something that spoke directly and profoundly to me. I grew up in Los Angeles going to a Methodist church, so religion and spirituality weren’t new for me, but the immersion in a Buddhist culture was a paradigm shift. When I returned to the U.S., I was working with mandala forms partly because of my interest in Buddhism (I practiced with Buddhist monks when I was living in Japan), but I was also looking at the circle and all that it means—its physical and bodily references in many different cultures. Some monks perform a ritualistic dance in which the circles they create with their bodies end up being a mandala. I grew up break-dancing, which is also a circle-based body gesture. #studiosanfordbiggers #bronxmuseum #bboy #bboying #mandala #hiphop The Bronx Museum of the Arts