Gender is a performance, according to artist Janet Biggs, and her preferred stage is often vast and challenging if not outright hostile and deadly.
Right now, she’s big in Taiwan, participating in a moving, multinational art expo as well as recently filming inside an active volcano, documenting the dangerous and exploited lives of Indonesian sulfur miners.
“It’s like I’m on Mars, with blood-red, turquoise and yellow landscapes,” said the adventurous artist whose work always involves an audience of at least three: a challenging environment, a venerable subject and the adventurous viewer.
Also right now, a rare and well-timed retrospective unfolds at The Tampa Museum of Art of her 15-plus years documenting and subtly commenting on exceptional gender performances often in isolated environments.
“She continues to investigate what it means to be male and female in our society, taking something very serious and making it very beautiful,” said Todd Smith, executive director of The Tampa Museum of Art.
Whether it’s following a woman attempting to break a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats, following “the last of the white male Arctic explorers,” or juxtaposing the beautiful bridled bounce of a black stallion and a severely autistic Asian girl who shines at an ice rink the very first time she puts on skates, Biggs' work captures the imagination.
“There’s unexpected power and beauty even when an individual is constrained,” she said.
Apparent in her work is a large measure of admiration for her subjects.
“I fall in love with every single one of them,” said Biggs. “I look at the work partly in terms of portraiture in that anytime somebody reveals themselves to you there is a certain amount of trust, and I fall in love just a little bit.”
Editing is an essential part of the process, but what images to include, which to discard?
“I try not to bore my audience,” Biggs said. “Everything that’s there is essential.”
That means arresting and stark visuals, editing that serves the narrative function, and a soundtrack often composed of rhythmic environmental sounds.
The New York City-based artist is the daughter of a composer and a music theory professor.
“Cadence and rhythm can be a vessel for emotion,” she said.
Biggs avoids imposing a summary on her works, which are open-ended in nature.
How one responds to seeing the artist shoot a flare gun across a frozen northern tundra or contrasting older women performing water ballet to Samuel Barber’s adagio for strings is strictly up the audience.
“I always want some kind of reaction,” she said. “There’s nothing worse than somebody being noncommittal and walking away.”
And audiences are certainly exploring her subjects and traversing the large spaces showcasing her multimedia meditations at the Tampa Museum of Art.
Sometimes the sound of installations overlap like the cacophonous street bands of composer Charles Ives’ childhood, or the works become private affairs using headphones or isolated, sound-proofed spaces.
In addition to more familiar gallery patron types as well as LGBT audiences interested in her meditations on gender identity, Janet’s work has been pulling in a different audience as well.
“We live in a very sports-driven market in the Tampa-Bay area and we’ve seen many people come in interested in extreme sports and the athletic nature of her work,” said Smith.
Whatever the audience, Biggs’ subject is always extraordinary people and how they project who they are through what they do.
“Her most recent work in the High Arctic typifies the extent the artist herself will go in the pursuit of boundary pushing,” Smith said.
S+H
WHAT: No Limits: Janet Biggs
WHEN: Through Jan. 8
WHERE: Tampa Museum of Art
INFORMATION: TampaMuseum.org
