Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin's A SMALL WORLD Video Installation Set for 3/30-8/26

The Jewish Museum is presenting Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin: a small world..., a video installation, from March 30 through August 26, 2012 in the Museum's Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center.

In the video (1999-2001, 6 min. 30 sec.), Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin juxtapose home movies of their families - one African American and one Jewish American - to explore The Commonalities of middle-class life across racial lines. The silent footage was shot during the childhood of the artists in the 1970s, Biggers in California and Zackin in New York. The similarities in both family narratives are striking, and the tone is playful. The Biggerses and the Zackins celebrate birthdays, travel to Disneyland, and entertain at indoor and outdoor gatherings. Yet the split screen sets up two clearly delineated and nonintersecting worlds - black America and white America. As a whole, the artwork leaves open the question of whether a bridge exists between these two universes.

Screenshot from a small world..., 2002, Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin, silent single channel color DVD single channel projection. The Jewish Museum, New York: Purchase: Fine Arts Acquisitions Committee.

Sanford Biggers, a Los Angeles native, lives in New York. He creates artworks that integrate film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music, and performance. His most recent solo exhibitions were at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Sculpture Center in New York, and Mass MoCA. His work has also been featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Jennifer Zackin is a New York-based mixed-media artist. Her sculptures, videos, and site-specific installations have been widely exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Zacheta National Art Gallery in Warsaw.

Located on the third floor of The Jewish Museum, the Goodkind Media Center houses a digital library of radio and television programs from the Museum's National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). It also features a changing exhibition space dedicated to video and new media. Using computer workstations, visitors are able to search material by keyword and by categories such as art, comedy, drama, news, music, kids, Israel, and the Holocaust.

Media programs at The Jewish Museum are supported by the Martin and Doris Payson Fund for Film and Media.

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/