Janine Antoni

“Performance wasn't something that I intended to do. I was doing work that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue, by touch, by these processes that are basic to all of our lives...that people might relate to in terms of process, everyday activities— bathing, eating, etc” (Janine Antoni). 

Janine Antoni takes the normal activities of life, such as eating and bathing, and uses them to create art.  She blurs the line between performance and art.  She uses her body as an instrument, as an object to help accomplish the feeling or story that she wants the work to come across as.  Some pieces to do not necessarily contain her physical body, but are an extension of the body.

Each piece represents something about humanity or being human.

In Antoni’s work, she tries to show how the body influences what we do and can be used a tool to create our art.  She tries to show us how the piece was made, whether it is from pieces of cloth, to chocolate, or even metal melted down to form the objects.  Each piece she uses is significant to that specific work of art or performance.  In the piece Moor, she uses pieces of cloth, such as her grandmother’s quilts, peoples or her own clothes, and stuff that reminds her of other things or people.  This piece is an extension of the body by how it binds together different memories to form one long rope or as she says ‘umbilical cord,’ to show how all these different memories make up who we are. 

Antoni’s work is meant to show people how our bodies tie into what we do and how we perceive things, such as when we are little and growing up to how things change for us.  Our bodies are tools for creating art, and Antoni uses them to the full advantage when creating her own works.   

Conduit 2009

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Gnaw 1992

Lick and Lather 1993

Loving Care