The Clouds, Quilts, Sand, and Stories That Stay With You

Some exhibitions are easy to walk through quickly. You take a few photos, glance at the artwork, and move on before you even reach the parking lot. Others stay with you long after you leave. Sanford Biggers: Drift at the Parrish Art Museum is one of those exhibitions.

Attending the opening TALK | SANFORD BIGGERS: DRIFT on May 16 with artist Sanford Biggers and Parrish Art Museum, Chief Curator Corinne Erni completely changed the experience for me. Hearing Biggers speak before walking through the galleries gave the exhibition an entirely different level of depth and emotional weight. Once I understood the meaning behind the clouds, quilts, sand installations, graffiti influences, Buddhism, and layered symbolism, the work immediately felt more personal and powerful. I was no longer simply looking at art. I was connecting to the stories inside it.

While walking through Sanford Biggers: Drift, I unexpectedly thought back to a visit I made years ago to Curaçao and the Kura Hulanda Museum. Standing inside a place once tied to the selling of enslaved people changes the way you look at objects forever. I remember learning there how textiles and handmade pieces often carried stories far deeper than decoration. Nothing felt accidental. Every object seemed to hold memory, survival, pain, culture, and resistance all at once.

That same feeling returned while walking through this exhibition. The work stopped feeling like something to simply observe and became something to feel.

The cloud motif runs throughout Sanford Biggers: Drift, beginning with the monumental ceiling installation Unsui (Cloud Forest). Clouds appear again in sculptures, paintings, quilt works, and even outside the Museum welcoming visitors before they enter. At first glance, the clouds feel peaceful and almost playful. After hearing Biggers explain their meaning, they begin to carry emotional weight connected to movement, freedom, spirituality, transformation, and memory.

During the artist talk, Biggers shared that clouds first entered his artistic language through graffiti culture in Los Angeles after seeing the iconic hip hop film Wild Style as a teenager. He described becoming immersed in graffiti, breakdancing, visual storytelling, and hip hop culture at a young age. Clouds became part of that visual vocabulary alongside bubble letters, arrows, shadows, and forced perspective.

Years later, while living in Japan and studying Buddhism, the cloud returned again in a spiritual context. Biggers spoke about learning the Buddhist term Unsui, loosely translating to “cloud water” or “sky water.” The term refers to monks who move through the world unattached and open to transformation.

That idea quietly follows you throughout the exhibition. Drift. Movement. Freedom. Becoming.

How Sanford Biggers Blends Buddhism, Hip Hop, Quilts, and American History Into One Powerful Exhibition

One of the most impressive aspects of Sanford Biggers: Drift is how naturally so many influences coexist within the work. Buddhism, Los Angeles graffiti culture, Gee’s Bend quilts, African sculpture, Japanese mandalas, breakdance floors, prayer rugs, and American history all flow together effortlessly. Nothing feels forced or overcrowded. Everything feels layered and intentional.

The quilt works especially stayed with me. Biggers’ Codex series uses antique quilts layered with paint, abstraction, symbols, and sculptural interventions. During the conversation, he discussed the long-rumored belief that quilts may have carried hidden codes for enslaved people escaping through the Underground Railroad. Whether fully documented or partially mythologized over time, Biggers embraces that uncertainty and describes these works as objects for “future ethnography.”

That phrase lingered in my mind long after I left the Museum.

Biggers is not simply preserving history. He is collaborating with it. He is adding another layer onto something that already carried generations of memory before it ever reached his hands.

The hip hop influence reappears here in a powerful way. Biggers compared the quilts to musical sampling. He described finding antique quilts almost like discovering an old James Brown record, then reshaping it, layering onto it, remixing it, and creating something entirely new without erasing where it came from.

That perspective completely changed the way I viewed the work. The quilts stopped feeling historical and started feeling alive.

The sand installation creates a similar emotional tension. At first glance, the work feels meditative and calm. Then you realize how fragile it actually is. One wrong movement could disrupt the entire piece. Inspired by Buddhist mandalas, prayer rugs, breakdance floors, and impermanence, the sand installation creates a sense of awareness inside the room that is difficult to explain until you experience it yourself.

Biggers also spoke about how performance exists inside the work itself. The making of the installation becomes performance. The viewer becomes part of the performance. Even the tension and silence inside the room become part of the artwork.

You can feel that tension while standing there.

The exhibition is part of the Parrish Museum’s larger USA250 initiative leading up to America’s 250th anniversary. Through Biggers’ work, ideas like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness suddenly feel far more layered and complicated than the patriotic phrases people often reduce them to.

• Who gets remembered?
• Who gets erased?
• Who gets freedom?
• Who gets to pursue happiness?

The exhibition never forces answers onto the viewer. Instead, it quietly creates space for reflection.

That is what makes Sanford Biggers: Drift feel so important right now. The exhibition asks people to slow down, look deeper, and reconsider the stories we inherit and the stories we continue telling.

The Parrish Art Museum itself becomes part of the experience. The architecture, natural light, stone, shadows, sand, and even the Hamptons sky outside feel connected to the work unfolding inside the galleries.

Photos honestly cannot capture the feeling of this exhibition. You need to stand underneath the clouds. You need to see the texture of the quilts up close. You need to feel the silence surrounding the sand installation. You need to experience how the room changes once you begin understanding the layers beneath the surface.

Real talk, this is one of those exhibitions that reveals something different every time you look at it.

Sanford Biggers: Drift does not scream for attention. It quietly changes the atmosphere around you before you even realize it.

Go see it.

Then go back and see it again. SANFORD BIGGERS: DRIFT at the Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, NY – May 17–September 13, 2026

• Sunday, June 14, 2 PM | Artist-Led Tour during Community Day (free and open to all)
  Friday, July 24, 3 PM | Curator-Led Tour
  Sunday, August 16, 11:30 AM | Artist Talk
  Friday, September 4, 6 PM | Artist-Led Tour
  Friday, September 4, 7 PM | Member Closing Reception

Real Talk. Real People. Real Art.