Mike + Doug Starn: Big Bambú

This new publication marks ten years since Mike + Doug Starn began to use bamboo in their studio. Their first public installation—on the roof of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2010—was experienced by more than 600,000 visitors, making it the ninth most-attended exhibition in the museum’s history. They have since created other iterations of Big Bambú around the world, with This Thing Called Life at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston being the first public staging indoors, in active dialogue with an existing structure.

The architecture of Big Bambú builds upon the artists’ ongoing investigation of the interconnectedness of life, which serves as a foundational principal and guiding philosophy for their unique approach to making art.

Mike and Doug Starn (American, born 1961) rose quickly to national prominence following their debut at the 1987 Whitney Biennial, and they have since been profiled in exhibitions worldwide. They have received many honors, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants, the International Center for Photography’s Infinity Award for Fine Art Photography, and a NASA artists-in-residency. Among their most recent commissions are a monumental glass and metal sculpture on the plaza of the Princeton University Art Museum (2016) and a ninety-foot-long glass-wall facade for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow (2017).