Moore 2016 Distinguished Alumna Janet Biggs has won a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts.
Biggs, a 1981 Moore graduate, is an accomplished multi-media artist who has traveled the world for her art. Biggs' video works often include images of individuals in extreme landscapes or situations. She has worked with miners underground, champion wrestlers, speed-obsessed bikers, synchronized swimmers, sulfur miners inside an active volcano, and camel herders in the Taklamakan Desert. Her earlier video work dealt with issues of psychosis and psychotropic drugs.
In addition to videos, her recent work includes multi-discipline performances, often including multiple large-scale videos, live musicians, and athletes. Biggs traveled to the far Arctic in 2009-2010, where she captured images of individuals' interaction with extremes environments above and below the ice. Biggs used this footage to create three videos, The Arctic Trilogy.
According to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation website, Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. The foundation receives approximately 3,000 applications each year. Although no one who applies is guaranteed success in the competition, there is no prescreening: all applications are reviewed. Approximately 175 fellowships are awarded each year.
Read more about Biggs' fellowship here.
