Consisting of several stand alone pieces composed primarily of bamboo and rock climbing chord, Sits Like a Man, But Smiles Like a Reptile is an outgrowth of the Big Bambú installation series that premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2010 where it was the 9th most attended exhibition in the museum’s history. Since then, Big Bambú has been exhibited in museums around the world and experienced by over 2 million people.
Big Bambú was conceived as an artwork not simply to be looked at, but as a social space that immerses one in an experience filled with tactile interaction. Incorporating ascending pathways to elevated living rooms, lounges, and performance spaces, Big Bambú is a habitable sculpture. The pieces featured in Sit Like a Man, But Smiles Like a Reptile expand on this concept. Created with the same techniques and materials as the iconic sculpture series, the collection of chaise lounges, benches, and Peacock chairs are imbued with the same values as Big Bambú, but on a more personal, intimate scale.
Identical twins Mike and Doug Starn were born in 1961. First having received international attention at the 1987 Whitney Biennial, for more than 20 years the Starns were primarily known for working conceptually with photography and are concerned largely with chaos, interconnection and independence. Over the past two and a half decades, they have continued to defy categorization, effectively combining traditionally separate disciplines such as photography, sculpture, and architecture, most notably their series Big Bambú.
