Artist # 11 Janine Antoni

With Janine Antoni, I had to read a little bit about her to begin writing about her. I first looked at her work, and chose some, but some of them I had no clue what they were so I had to read about them. The main one I read about was her cast of her mouth with a spoon.

This piece is titled Unbilical. I honestly couldn't tell what it was by looking at it. I read that Janine Antoni is very involved in her work and uses her body many times. This is a cast of the inside of her mouth with a spoon cast in the Antoni silver in her mouth held by a cast of her mother's hand. (Antoni) Everything is cast in silver, I think that's why it made it hard to tell exactly what it was. The palm of the hand also didn't and still doesn't look like a hand to me. When I think about this piece, it makes me think of a baby. The mother is feeding her child. When mothers feed their children, it's usually only when they're babies. Although, I'm not sure what she is trying to say about that fact. It could be that she never really had that, she misses that, etc.

We looked at both of these in class:



I think we looked at the first one when we were doing our transformation project, or when we received our midterm assignment. There are seven chocolate and seven soap sculptures. They are self portraits of herself that she made by licking the chocolate and washing with the soap. Here she made a statement that describes these pieces.

"I wanted to work with the tradition of self-portraiture but also with the classical bust...I had the idea that I would make a replica of myself in chocolate and in soap, and I would feed myself with my self, and wash myself with my self. Both the licking and the bathing are quite gentle and loving acts, but what’s interesting is that I’m slowly erasing myself through the process. So for me it’s about that conflict, that love/hate relationship we have with our physical appearance, and the problem I have with looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘Is that who I am?’"

It's really interesting when I think about that. She's erasing herself with the process of making herself. I'm also really impressed with how they turned out for licking and washing to make them. It would be really difficult. It shows how much she becomes a part of her pieces. Our professor said she was able to go and see this work and the smell was so strong and almost unbearable. The soap and the chocolate are an interesting combination.
- Janine Antoni

Here are a couple more of her pieces: