Janet Biggs, 2026
Three-channel HD video with spatial sound
Running time 11:39

This three-channel video installation with mesmerizing sound interweaves images filmed in Utah and the Yucatán, robotic digital sounds, the soaring voice of soprano Ileana Muñoz, and excerpts from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s poem "Primero Sueño" (First Dream).

This new chapter, the third in Biggs’s ongoing Eclipse series, begins in an intimate dislocation: the confusion of sundowning syndrome experienced by her mother, a slipping of day into night and night into day – as occurs during solar eclipses. In Utah, the desert appears almost posthuman: mineral, aerial, remote. A figure in a life-supporting spacesuit traverses the terrain as if on Mars, or after Mars, observed from
above by an unseen intelligence. Here, the eclipse is not simply recorded, it is felt: as pressure, as threshold, as the sky darkens and the earth becomes speculative.

The visuals then shift to Yucatán, where the work inverts inside a cenote. Ileana Muñoz, deep within the submerged space of silence and resonance, sings as she moves amongst stones, water, and echoes. Her voice carries the words of "Primero Sueño" (First Dream), Sor Juana’s vast meditation on night, failed knowledge, and awakening, the soul attempting to comprehend all things at once. As Ileana ascends a long, precarious ladder leading out of the cenote, she sings a Mayan melody, connecting past and present, speculative futures and ancient knowledge.

With Eclipse, From Utah to Yucatán and by blending moving image, sound, language, and research, Janet Biggs explores the limits of knowing, ways of approaching the unknown, and how to open new perceptual and conceptual spaces.