Janine Antoni

2007-08 Susan Paul Firestone Lecturer in Contemporary Art

Janine Antoni's Loving Care
Loving Care, 1993
Performance with hair dye, dimensions variable
Photographed by Prudence Cumming Associates
at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, 1993
Janine Antoni's Saddle

Saddle, 2000
Full Raw Hide
25 1/2 X 32 1/2 X 78 1/2 inches
(64.77 X 82.55 X 199.39 cm)

Janine Antoni's Touch

Touch, 2002
Still from DVD installation
14 feet 8 inches x 13 feet 2 inches
Duration: 9.37 minute loop

Janine Antoni's Mortar and Pestle

Mortar and Pestle, 1999
C-print, photographic assistance, David Allison
48 X 48 inches
(121.9 X 121.9 cm)

Artist Janine Antoni is focused on process. According to ArtandCulture.com, “She takes every compulsive practice associated with femininity and hyperbolically engages it, both participating in and criticizing a society that she characterizes as ‘bulimic.’” From using her hair to mop the floor (as in “Loving Care” to chewing and sculpting blocks of chocolate and lard (as in “Gnaw”) to blinking paint on a canvas with her mascara-laden eyelashes, all the while engaging museum-goers while creating her art. As Antoni stated in an article in the winter 1997 issue of ArtJournal:

“[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 in I can bring the viewer back to the making of it. I try to do that in a lot of different way, 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. But there are times when the best way to keep people in that place, which for me is so alive and pertinent, is to show the process or the making.”

Antoni comes to Mary Baldwin University March 18 as the second Firestone Lecturer in Contemporary Art. Born in the Bahamas, Antoni earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She has had major exhibitions of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, S.I.T.E. Santa Fe, and the Irish Museum of Art in Dublin. She is also the recipient of several awards including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, an ICA New Media Award, and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award.

Antoni has also been featured in a number of important features on contemporary art including New York Magazine’s “The Artists Who Still Matter: Twenty living, working New Yorkers whose art changed art,” ARTNews’ “Where the Great Women Artists Are Now, and in Season 2 of PBS’ Art:21 — Art in the Twenty-First Century.

Visit The Luhring Augustine Gallery for more information about Antoni and to see more images of her work.

All artwork presented on this site is courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

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