How Janine Antoni Simultaneously Disturbs and Delights
ARTnews revisits Janine Antoni’s practice through footage from a 2003 Art21 feature showing her remaking a bust from her landmark installation Lick and Lather (1993), commissioned for that year’s Venice Biennale. The work comprises 14 neoclassical-style busts cast from a mold of Antoni’s head and chest—seven made of chocolate and seven of soap—which she gradually alters by washing and licking her own effigy to explore a love/hate relationship with physical appearance. The article notes that the piece has been remade multiple times due to strong reactions, including an incident at the Biennale when a young woman licked and bit some noses off. It situates Antoni’s rise in 1990s New York and highlights her verb-titled works (including Gnaw (1992), Moor (2001), and Tear (2008)) and her use of her body as a tool to counter what she calls alienation from how objects are made.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Delight, Disturb, and the Books Behind It