Janine Antoni's practice continues to expand the language of contemporary art by turning the body into both tool and subject. Across works such as Lick and Lather, Gnaw, Loving Care and Paper Dance, the artist transforms everyday actions like washing, biting, tearing and moving into sculptural and performative gestures.
Born in Freeport, Bahamas, in 1964, Antoni has long explored how identity is shaped by touch, labor, gender and cultural memory. Her early work challenged the distance between artist and object by using her own hair, teeth, tongue and skin as instruments of making. In Lick and Lather, for example, she cast busts from her own head and chest in chocolate and soap, allowing the material to slowly change through handling and use.
Her 1993 performance Loving Care turned a beauty product into a floor-painting medium, while Gnaw used lard and chocolate to question the authority of Minimalist sculpture through a feminist lens. Later works extended this inquiry into movement and collaboration, including her long partnership with choreographer Anna Halprin on Paper Dance.
Antoni has also described her art as a way to reconnect viewers with the physical world, arguing that objects often hide the process of their own making. That idea runs through her teaching, her studio practice and her ongoing reflection on how artworks change over time. She is now preparing for her first museum retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where her career will be viewed through sculpture, video, drawing and performance.
Antoni's work suggests a future in which art remains deeply human, tactile and open to reinterpretation across generations.
