Janine Antoni was born on January 19, 1964 in Freeport, Bahamas. As a child she danced and had an interest in performing art. After receiving her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, in New York, she decided to attend The Rhode Island School of Design where she earned her M.F.A. in sculpture in 1989.
Antoni’s work is interesting because she uses a variety of mediums to express herself as well as her criticisms and comments about American culture. She is considered a sculptor, installation artist, performance artist, as well as a photographer. Most of her work directly deals with both process and performance. Often, day-to-day experiences and rituals that have become obsessive in American culture influence her work. For example, her work discusses femininity or our culture’s obsession with packaging and outward appearances.
In 1992, Antoni created “Gnaw” a performance piece in which she took two six hundred pound blocks, one made of chocolate and the other made of lard, and gnawed them. During her performance she either swallowed or spit out the excess, in which she used later to make chocolate candy boxes or lard filled lipsticks. The final product consisted of an installation room filled with mirrors, the two cubes on the floor, and the chocolate candy boxes and lipsticks placed on shelves. For this piece she was heavily influenced on American culture with its constant consuming and discarding of products, which is why she refers to American society as being “bulimic”. In this work, she criticizes America’s obsession with physical appearance and beauty, while she relates it to packaging and product and desire for both. She states that, “packaging is a symbol of our times. It is a seduction—unwrapping is like undressing” (Antoni on “Gnaw”).
As she did in “Gnaw”, Antoni used her body as a tool and immersed herself physically into her work, “With Gnaw I was thinking about traditional sculpture, about carving. I was also interested in figurative sculpture. I put those two ideas together and decided that rather than describing the body, I would use the body, my body, as a tool for making art." (Antoni). In 1993, she created “Lick and Lather” in which she made busts of herself out of soap and chocolate. She then used the busts to lick or rub the faces away to distort them. In this performance she wanted to describe the love hate relationship people have with their own appearances.
One of Antoni’s earlier works also deals with the idea of love and femininity. Her installation of “Wean” in 1989 is made up of six impressions of her own nipple as well as superficial baby bottle nipples, and the packaging for the fake nipples. The impressions start from the left with her breast and nipple and move toward the right with the foe nipples and finally the packaging. In this piece she discussed how babies and their mothers separate from one another, and as they become distanced they are forced into culture full of “substitutions”. Her work also discusses how the female body becomes objectified, and made into a latex form.
In her performance of “Loving Care” in 1993, Antoni surprised gallery viewers when she dipped her hair in hair dye and used her body as a tool while she painted the floor. Her performance dealt with the idea of femininity through what was considered to be, by critics like Ewa Lejer Burcharth, Abstract Expressionism. By mopping the floor she brought up consumerism and feminine constructs. The idea of mopping also played with the idea of woman doing their domestic chores.
More recent work, “Saddle” created in 2000, is a ghost-like mold of Antoni’s body, cast out of cowhide. It too speaks about consumerism in popular culture as much as it does about living and dying, sensuality, and the body. I personally find this piece to be really thought provoking because of its grotesque quality.
I find Antoni’s work to be very interesting and at the same time both beautiful and grotesque. In her art, Antoni usually has more than one reason or influence for why she created her work. Her art makes me think about women’s place in society and culture. I also wonder what the work would mean at first glance, before I knew what the artist intended. A lot of Antoni’s work is about the uncomfortable and putting the viewer in and uncomfortable place, so I have to wonder…
If Antoni didn’t make her work uncomfortable would the work have the same connotations?
Would the work be as effective?
What do you think of her work?
Do you think her work is grotesque, beautiful, confusing, thought provoking or all of the above?
5 comments:
I don't find her work grotesque at all. I think it's pretty cool looking, like the mold of the body on the floor and the sculptures of the faces. I like what she wanted the sculptures to represent - how people battle with loving and hating their appearance, especially women. This idea of how people look is a large theme in today's society, in part derived from American consumerism and consumption of material possessions. I guess the grotesque aspect Torie mentions is how she distorts normal interpretations of what people are supposed to look like, thus hopefully questioning why people care so much about appearance in the first place.
~ben
The work of Janine Antoni is brilliant. I love how her message of the 'bulimic' society obsessed with appearance and consumerism is not dull but extremely bold. I think that her message remains interesting because the sculptures/performances have that obsessive quality that reflects our society. The material of the sculptures such as the lard and cowhide is grotesque when one thinks about eating it or placing it on one's body. However, the sculptures and performances are not grotesque to me because they are critiques and the message transcends the material (literally and metaphorically speaking).
I feel like her work is as uncomfortable as the arguments she is trying to convey. For example, Antoni’s piece called “Gnaw” would make many viewers feel not only uncomfortable but would also be viewed as disgusting as they watched her literally gnaw on lard and chocolate. Being a female I feel that a majority of women, many who are constantly criticized about their body size and bombarded with advertisements of thin women, would be able to relate to Antoni and the point that she is trying to convey, while men would be more disgusted rather than understanding (just my personal opinion). I think that Antoni’s work is really interesting and successfully drives her point home by causing such discomfort in viewers who are not normally faced with such “abnormal” behavior. The best way to describe her work is thought provoking. Grotesque, beautiful and confusing are all results of the thoughts that her work stirs up in the viewer.
I love Antoni's work because of its intimate nature. It seems grotesque because she is confronting very personal and intimate physical processes, like the action of biting and eating chocolate and lard. I find it fascinating that she confronts her work in such a way that she is creating something in these intimate actions.
"Lick and Lather" to me, is so successful because she would take these busts of herself into the bath with her and rub them against her body. This action of rubbing soap on the body is in itself a very personal and intimate thing. What is the figurative meaning of her rubbing HERSELF on her body, and in doing that removing the details of the bust's face?
I think it's really fascinating how the action of making art can be a very personal intimate thing, but also be able to relate to many viewers.
I think that Antoni's work addresses grotesque themes in a very beautiful and interesting way. I think Alyson brought up an interesting point about the intimacy of her work and how people connect with it. I feel that within her performances she tries to represent an "Everywoman." Is possible to do in a critique of American culture?
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