This influence brought on the inspiration for Biggers’ most notable mandala work, “Mandala of the B-Bodhisattva II” (2000). The installation is a linoleum break-dance floor decorated in a mandala pattern with colors from the Rasta flag. Rastafarian culture, a religious movement among Black Jamaicans that teaches the eventual redemption of Black people and their return to Africa, has been a deeply rooted interest and fascination for Biggers from his youth. Expounding on this mandala work for Sculpture Magazine in 2021, Biggers remarks: “I grew up break-dancing, which is also a circle-based body gesture. So, that mandala is autobiographical. It’s a break-dance floor, as well as a ritual power object. The pattern is part of my original exploration of sacred geometry, which continues the research in the paintings of my cousin John (Thomas) Biggers. I consider P-Funk, Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Samuel Delany, and Octavia Butler, like my cousin, to be proto-Afrofuturists, referencing outer space as a way of finding a free and liberated space for Black people. The world we inhabit hasn’t been that.”

The evolution of the mandala motif within Biggers’ work developed through his vast multimedia exploration into the mandala’s shapes and symbols. This exploration progressed five to six years (translated through several more dance floor and sand works), eventually pivoting to fabric and antique quilts as his primary medium. The inspiration for his now-ongoing quilt series came from two prominent sources. The first being The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibition (2002) at the Whitney Museum, which saw a collection of work from the residence of Gee’s Bend, over four generations of women, (1880-ongoing), that have created the settlement’s unique patchwork quilting tradition. Secondly, his earlier exposure to textiles in his childhood came through his mother’s fascination with runway designs. She would often take photos to seamstresses in L.A’s garment district to replicate the designs. 

Biggers states in the WWD interview in 2020: “Even though I was crawling around on the floor or running around and getting into trouble while she was sorting through bolts of fabric, I learned about fabric and pattern and the quality of textiles through that,” he says. “The funny thing is, I didn’t even reconnect with those stories of my mother until I had been doing the quilts for five or six years. One day I’m sitting in my studio, and I was like, wait a second—this is actually muscle memory, going through all these fabrics. Because now I have bins and bins of fabric and going through them in some weird way–I hate to get too, what’s the word, New Age-y for you–but in some ways it’s a connection to my mom.”