Meet the Artists: Janet Biggs and peter campus

Two generation defining artists come together in their first collaborative show: Journeys to Places Known and Unknown: Moving Images by Janet Biggs and peter campus. Organized by Terrie Sultan, an independent curator and the former executive director of the Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, NY, this exhibition will be on view at Sarasota Art Museum until January 15, 2023.

Janet Biggs (b. 1959) is a research-based, interdisciplinary artist known for her immersive work in video, film, and performance. peter campus (b. 1937) is an influential artist in the canons of new media and video art. Beginning in the 1970s, peter campus pioneered the nascent medium of video and moving images as a way to make art.

Biggs and campus have long been interested in the threats of climate change and the impact of human activity on the environment. Biggs has filmed in some of the places most impacted by global warming on the planet, including the Taklamakan Desert, Afar Triangle, the Arctic, and Antarctica. campus’ work has focused exclusively on landscape since the 1980s, when he began collecting and photographing stones picked up on walks along Montauk Beach. For both artists, looking to nature has enabled them to feel hope for the future and a connection to a wider community. 

Together, they use moving images to explore intersections of science, philosophy, and spirituality. Biggs presents expansive, hauntingly beautiful tributes to humanity’s perseverance in intense situations; campus, meanwhile, offers quiet moments of meditation with his painstakingly constructed, painterly videographs.

Journeys to Places Known and Unknown is the outgrowth of a year of collaborative conversations between the artists and their exploring modes of perception, nature, memory, solitude, spirituality, and humanity’s impact on the natural world. Although their styles and approaches are different, this exhibition represents a cohesive look at both artists’ work and their use of moving images to change how we see the natural world.

“Journeys to Places Known and Unknown: Moving Images by Janet Biggs and peter campus” is on view at the Sarasota Art Museum October 16, 2022–January 15, 2023.