Janet Biggs is an interdisciplinary artist known for her immersive work in video, film and performance. Biggs’ single channel videos and video installations focus on individuals in extreme landscapes or situations, navigating the territory between art, science and technology. Her work has taken her into areas of conflict and to Mars (as a member of Mars simulation crews). Biggs has worked with institutions from NOAA to NASA and CERN and collaborated with high energy nuclear physicists, neuroscientists, Arctic explorers, and astrophysicists. In 2020, Biggs sent a project up to the International Space Station.
In addition to videos, her work includes multi-discipline performances, often including large-scale videos, artificial intelligence, dancers, and live musicians.
Biggs works have been exhibited worldwide at institutions including solo presentations at Jeu de Paume; The Virginia Tech Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT); Taubman Museum of Art; the Spencer Museum of Art; New Museum Theater; United Nations Headquarters; Boca Raton Museum of Art; Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre and the Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos de Tenerife; Neuberger Museum of Art; SCAD Museum of Art; Blaffer Art Museum; Musee d’art contemporain de Montréal; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Tampa Museum of Art; Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; Everson Museum of Art; and the Mint Museum of Art; among others.
Reviews of her work have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, ArtForum, ARTNews, Art in America, Flash Art, Artnet.com, and many others.
Biggs is a Guggenheim Fellow (2018), and a recipient of the Visionary Woman Award (2023), CCI Cyber Arts and Design Program Award (2023), the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts Award (2011), the Arctic Circle Fellowship/Residency (2010), Art Matters, Inc. (2010), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2004), and the NEA Fellowship Award (1989).
Her work is in collections including JPMorgan Chase, New York City; Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC), Languedoc-Roussillon, France; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa; Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment, Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; La Collezione Videoinsight®, Turin, Italy; Zabludowicz Collection, London, England; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, NC.; and the New Britain Museum of Art, New Britain, Connecticut.
Janet Biggs is a member of The Explorers Club and the New Museum’s cultural incubator, NEW INC. Biggs works with Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York City, Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland, and CONNERSMITH, Washington, DC.
Biggs’ immersive multi-channel video installation of sights and sounds takes the viewer deep into the Amazonian rainforest, full of strangler figs and howler monkeys struggling for survival. Imagery follows the path of a total solar eclipse that occurred in 1858, one hundred years before Biggs was conceived. The installation’s videos conclude in a cloud forest, where expectations are inverted and otherworldly connections made possible.
The work originates in Biggs’ memories of her mother’s struggles with Sundowning Syndrome, a symptom of dementia that interferes with the ability to distinguish day for night. After her mother’s death, Biggs began a four year journey, placing herself in multiple paths of totality as she sought to reconnect with her mother. The path of totality has been described as a time when the entire biome reverses day for night.
During her research, Biggs came upon a document titled An Account of the Total Eclipse of the Sun by Lt J.M. Gillis, published by the Smithsonian in 1859. Gillis’ account of the eclipse, particularly indigenous people’s perspectives, compelled Biggs to travel to the Amazon to film the 1858 eclipse’s path.
With support from National Geographic/Lindblad, Biggs embarked on a journey that conflates time and reimagines what is possible while balancing within the precarious relationship of humans to the natural world and individuals to each other.
About Private Public Gallery Private Public Gallery, located in Hudson, NY, is a gallery and cultural venue committed to showcasing large-scale and significant works by contemporary artists from the Hudson Valley and beyond. Founder Christopher Freeman is dedicated to creating opportunities for artists to present ambitious projects that push the boundaries of traditional exhibition spaces.
For more information, please contact: Chris Freeman, 212-286-0075
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Eclipse (Amazon, September 7, 1858) is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature through the Media Arts Assistance Fund a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm.