Sanford Biggers

Slow Murder

Slow Murder is formed from pieces of 19th-century quilts and other striking fabrics. These antique quilts, which were gifted to Biggers, are believed to have been used on the Underground Railroad as signposts. In Slow Murder, Biggers reanimates these quilts into a soft, graffiti-esque mural that hosts a myriad of codes and symbols related to Black American history and culture. Biggers claims, “[T]o decipher most of my work, you’ve just got to read the titles.”

There are various ways the title of this work, Slow Murder, can be interpreted. “Murder” could reference the clustering of the crows that Biggers paints on top of this assemblage of textiles, as a group of crows is called a “murder.” Additionally, “slow murder” could speak to the crows’ participation in a type of torturous slow death, like lynching. This reading calls to mind the lyrics of Billie Holiday’s well-known protest song “Strange Fruit” (1939): “Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck.” In considering this work within the contemporary socio-political context, “slow murder” could also speak to the recent and ongoing slow, suffocating murders of Black Americans via acts of police brutality.