7 Heavens

2013

Sanford Biggers explores the rich relationships that quilts hold with memory, storytelling, transgenerational knowledge, and the body, in both historical and contemporary contexts. The artist was inspired by the belief that quilts were used and displayed by nineteenth-century abolitionists to convey coded messages and facilitate passage along the Underground Railroad. The title of the work imbues the tradition of quilt-making with a spiritual connection, referring to understandings of the seven different levels of heaven across many faiths. The spiraling and other linear motifs recall sacred geometry, which ascribes symbolic and otherworldly meanings to certain visual forms.