By Marilyn Bauer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

"It's the relationships between cultures I am interested in," says New York multimedia artist Sanford Biggers. ZACHERY LARNER

Whether it's the Eastern inspired rap music of New York hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan or the melding of classic American Westerns and kung fu in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films, the past several years have seen a steady stream of media using classical Japanese art cast into a new form through the appropriation of American hip-hop.

The trend can be seen in the influence of Japanese street culture in movies such as Lost in Translation and the popularity of manga graphic novels and anime-inspired art shows, both forms of elaborate Japanese cartooning.

New York multimedia artist Sanford Biggers, who opens Both/And Not Either/Or, Friday at the Contemporary Arts Center, says he's been putting the two together for more than seven years.

"It's the relationships between cultures I am interested in, the similarities of disparate cultures," he says. "The spirituality of Shinto in Japan, Buddhism in India and the spirituality of the African Diaspora - Yoruba and Santeria. There are too many similarities between these religious practices, before there was any kind of sophisticated travel. I think these traditions are still inside us, latent. We don't get to express them until we tap into them with film, art, dance."

IF YOU GO

What: Sanford Biggers: Both/And Not Either/Or When: May 29-Aug. 15 Where: Contemporary Arts Center, 44 East Sixth St., downtown Information: 345-8400, Web site

Biggers is known for melding Eastern religions, urban street culture and its language, 1970s process art and technology such as video to create sculptural installations built from discarded materials. For example, in his mandala dance floors, he cuts out patterns from old rubber tile to create the Buddhist concentric design used in meditation. Biggers, however, transforms the sacred image into a mat for break dancers to exhibit their acrobatic moves.

Biggers, 33, grew up in the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles. "I used to breakdance growing up in L.A.," he says. "When I grew up, you had to have one, if not all, of the hip-hop arts. I had breakdancing, graffiti and deejaying, not rapping though. Graffiti is how I started doing art."

He went to Moorehouse College in Atlanta for undergraduate school, then took off to Florence, Italy, where he studied sculpture and Italian. His next move was to Japan where he stayed for two years, before attending the Maryland Institute College of Art. His final educational stop was the Chicago Art Institute where he earned his master's in fine art.

For his Cincinnati exhibition, Biggers includes a video on a Buddhist bell choir ceremony he created to honor the history of hip-hop, a feather tunic commissioned by Princeton University that crosses African tradition with hip street fashion and a new commission for the Contemporary Arts Center that fuses slave dances to the modern dance floor.

E-mail mbauer@enquirer.com