"Lick and Lather" Janine Antoni"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?’"- Janine Antoni
"Loss and Desire" from Art 21 Video
http://ec2-75-101-145-29.compute-1.amazonaws.com/art21/artists/janine-antoni
Janine Antoni's "Lick and Lather" busts of herself are definitely interesting. When I first heard about these sculptures and how they came to be, I thought it was extremely odd. For someone to make something beautiful and so personal and then eat it or bathe with it seemed so regressive. Why would someone ruin their work? As I watched the video from Art 21 titled "Loss and Desire," which featured Atoni's work, I learned more about her process and why she chose to do what she did.
It's eye opening to hear how much she related to her work. To start, making a bust of oneself is already a way to literally involve one's whole self in their work. She made art in her own image. I couldn't understand why then that she would want to take away from that. When she ate away at the chocolate of herself or washed herself with her soap bust, she was, in my mind, destroying a part of her and her hard labor.
I was mistaken. This whole creating and then destroying thing was her plan all along. The way she described it, "slowly erasing myself through the process," was deep. It was almost as if she was erasing everything she disliked about herself. Those little imperfections that she noticed when she looked in the mirror had vanished through her process. It's funny how she described it that she was feeding and bathing herself with herself. So, in short, she was feeding herself by eating the things she didn't like about herself and in someway, destroyed that negativity.
These busts are creative and thoughtful and most certainly take the pursuit of sculpting to the next level.
