A monumental sculpture referencing African culture is joining the bronze sculpture of the Titan Prometheus, a 1930s relief of the Greek god Zeus, the heroic-sized Atlas statue, and other classical art masterpieces representative of different cultures and civilizations, at the iconic Art Deco complex in New York City — The Rockefeller Center.

The 25-foot-tall bronze sculpture depicting a person or deity with an enormous head sitting majestically on a throne is aptly named ‘Oracle’ and is the work of African-American artist Sanford Biggers. Unveiled last week, ‘Oracle’ is now a cynosure at the front of Rockefeller Center’s Fifth Avenue entrance and will be open for visits from members of the public from June 29. 

Visits to the sculpture are designed to be interactive as visitors will be able to activate a QR code near the sculpture and ask the “oracle” figure a question. They may then receive an answer from one of several unnamed celebrities, who will take turns answering queries with “mysterious, poetic vagaries,” according to Biggers.

The sculpture is the latest addition and the largest-scale commissioned work in Biggers’ Chimera series, a collection of art forms that merges European statues and African masks in an interrogation of sculptural art’s history and power.

“The entire installation is based on mythology, narrative, and mystery,” Biggers told the Art Newspaper. “Rockefeller Center itself, as an architectural entity, is very much steeped in mythology and mystery.”

Born in Los Angeles but living and working in New York for the past twenty-two years, multidisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers has produced art that has dazzled the Big Apple through the years. In a 2020  show titled “Codeswitch” held at the Bronx Museum, he displayed 50 paintings and sculptures that he constructed out of vintage African American quilts. According to a report in the New York Times, he had drawn inspiration for this series from the quilters of Gee’s Bend, a rural Alabaman community of mostly women quilters who have been sewing abstract, masterful works of art since the early 19th century.

Biggers is also known for his “sculpture-by-gunfire,” and for his BAM series, he reshaped wax-dipped bronze sculptures by shooting them with bullets at a firing range. He also sings and plays the keys in Moon Medicin, an experimental funk group, with whom he curated a soundtrack for the Rockefeller installation.

Bigger’s show, which in addition to ‘Oracle’ will feature features flags, photographs, music, other Chimera sculptures, and video works installed inside and outside of the complex, marks the Rockefeller Center’s first-ever campus-wide exhibition designed by a single artist. The blue flags decorated with white, wave-like patterns evoke Japanese kimonos and Buddhist mandalas, as well as the waves of the Middle Passage, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.

In a chat with Artnet News, Biggers said he drew inspiration for the Rockefeller Center’s exhibition from the ancient Greek Temple of Zeus and African religious art, especially that of the Luba and Maasai cultures. He further revealed that he was intrigued by ongoing scholarly conversations about the whitewashing of European sculptural history and “black-washing” of African sculpture. And in another statement, he stated that during the early 20th century, Westerners stripped “hundreds of [African] objects … of all material adornment and any ritual and cultural residue”.

Like many of the art shows, fairs, and exhibitions this year, Bigger’s ‘Oracle’ sculpture was originally scheduled to be unveiled in September 2020 but was delayed until May 5 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sculptures depicting African deities and mythology figures are some of the most coveted African art pieces in the global art market. Several masterpieces by contemporary African artists and galleries which are potential collector’s items can be bought via Aworanka online art marketplace.