Image of the Day : Sanford Biggers

Describing his incredible "Lotus" artwork, Sanford Biggers once said, "it is a circular diagram that looks like a lotus blossom, but all the petals are cross-sections of slave ships so you see all the bodies lined up in the slave ship. It is diagrammatic but looks like a big beautiful mandala… (...) Talking about universals, the slave trade was a universal thing, it was part of the global economy. And like it or not, everyone is somehow implicated in it… so as you walk through and see yourself, and see other people through it, it is sort of saying- “We are all a product of this”. Even psychically. Not just our country. British, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, you know you go on and on and on. Everyone had a hand in this." He says "had", but slavery is apparently still around: the current version of Dubai wouldn't exist without it. (rnk)