[(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#295c72)+(bg:#c6d1d5)) The Day [[She]] Ate Her Home
Written by [[Janine Antoni]]
& Reinterpreted by [[Joya Assael]]](enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))
<img src="https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2019/02/antoni-milagros-still-018.jpg" height="300px" width="490px">
Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. Antoni is known for her unusual processes, using her body as both a tool and a source of meaning within the conceptual framework of her practice. Antoni’s early methods involved transforming unique materials such as chocolate and soap through habitual, everyday processes like bathing, eating and sleeping to create sculptural works and installations. By way of her body of work, Antoni carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the senses. In each piece, no matter the medium or image, a conveyed physicality is meant to speak directly to the viewer’s body.
Her work shows nationally and internationally. Antoni has exhibited at numerous major institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Magazsin 3 Handelshögskolan, Stockholm, Sweden; Haywood Gallery, London, UK; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany. She has also been represented in several international biennials and festivals such as the Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg, South Africa; Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, South Korea; Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey; S.I.T.E. Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe, NM; Project 1 Biennial, New Orleans, LA; Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India; and documenta14, at the Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. In 2016, Antoni collaborated with Anna Halprin and Stephen Petronio on Ally, an exhibition presented by The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, with major support from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. In 2019, Antoni collaborated again with Halprin, presenting a major solo exhibition, Paper Dance, at The Contemporary Austin, Texas. Most recently, Antoni was the subject of a solo show at The Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, for which she was commissioned to present a new body of work, I am fertile ground in the cemetery’s catacombs.
Antoni is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Irish Museum of Modern Art/Glen Dimplex Artist Award in 1996, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, the Joan Mitchell Painting and Sculpture Award in 1998, the New Media Award, ICA Boston in 1999, the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 1999, an Artes Mundi, Wales International Visual Art Prize nomination in 2004, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2011, a Creative Capital Artist Grant in 2012, and Anonymous Was A Woman Grant in 2014.
Her work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY.
Monographs and publications of Antoni’s work include MOOR published by Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall and SITE Santa Fe; The Girl Made of Butter published by The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; and JANINE ANTONI published by Ink Tree Edition, Küsnacht, Switzerland. Her most recent monograph, Ally: Janine Antoni, Anna Halprin, Stephen Petronio published by The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA and Hirmer Publishers, presents a series of remarkable artworks instigated by Antoni in her 2016 collaboration with dance-maker and community activist Anna Halprin and choreographer Stephen Petronio. The volume is edited by Adrian Heathfield and designed by David Caines. Stunning photographic documents of the performances and installations (first shown in 2016) are accompanied by critical reflections on the artists’ oeuvres by Jacquelynn Baas, Carol Becker and Richard Move, alongside a fragmentary memoir from the prolific author Hélène Cixous navigating aging and loss.
Antoni currently resides in New York and is represented by Luhring Augustine Gallery, NY, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco. (enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))She was a [[hungry]] one.(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))Hungry for ideas, hungry for beauty, hungry to have a voice, and hungry for [[snacks]].(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))[[She]] couldn’t get any work done because she became so distracted by her [[growling tummy]]. She thought, “How can I make a difference if I’m so focused on myself?” But then she remembered, in the words of the wise old crone, “The personal is political.”(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))So one [[morning]] she woke up and toasted a waffle. [[She]] snapped two cinnamon sticks in half and fit them tightly into the corner pockets of the waffle to make her [[dining room]] table, using banana slices as her [[stools]].
(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))That afternoon she took out a [[soft]] slice of [[bread]] for her [[bedroom]] mattress and laid a perfectly flat sheet of [[peanut butter]] and a lumpy jelly [[comforter]] over it. (enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1500/q/75/i/337de890f0a7a44539612f9801136b83512f893f9febf4508c6cfc3c3cf83c03/banana-chair-for-instagram.jpg" height="1100px" width="780px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))She cut a little square of [[bread]] for her [[pillow|bedroom]]. Sliced carrots made her side tables, and a fruit wrap was her rug. She decided to take a [[nap]], slumbering in the [[soft]] comfort of the jelly.
(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))Even in her [[sleep]] she was [[hungry]]. (enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))<img src="https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C5103AQFxkm9ICLl9Og/profile-displayphoto-shrink_800_800/0/1517340802081?e=1689206400&v=beta&t=tIh0drWJCZfWyLu3Ny4yDW9yqhCUxaqQbZNr7E8_s3c" height="300px" width="300px">
Joya Assael is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Durham, NC. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017, with a B.A. in Visual Studies, she worked in the commercial art world and as an educator in New York, NY. She then moved to Richmond, VA, to further explore her passion for art education.
In her art making and education work, Assael enjoys exploring play and superstition, ritual and comfort, and surrealism and the home.
She loves to cook for friends, swim in rivers and oceans, walk around large cities and beautiful cemeteries, start projects and never finish them, and lay on the floor with her pet rabbit, Olafur.
She values activist art making, transdisciplinary approaches, and embracing multiplicities and complexities.(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1500/q/75/i/44b8313c6ea81fe4588a3c3e4bae7c6c8069c0db80c71cd1e8a8aca1ecaf82f9/bed-on-clouds.jpg" height="1100px" width="750px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))My grandma, my mom, and I all love peanut butter. One of the few meals I would eat as a picky child was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
There used to be a deli in my hometown, and I my classic order was a PB&J. I loved that it came on [[soft]] white [[bread]]. Toward the end of elementary school, the diner closed, and a bakery and cafe called The Mad Hatter opened in the same building. Sometimes, in the [[morning]]s before high school, my mom would take me to The Mad Hatter for breakfast. It was a way to bond--she was often [[working|door]] late in the evenings and was exausted and [[sleep]]-deprived on the weekends due to her insomnia. (enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))She made an avocado tub and [[tomato toilet]]. She cut a shallot in half and pushed her thumb through to make the well of a sink. It was the [[guacamole bathroom]] of her [[dreams]].(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7d03c71b4266f8a6978e7f147698f1c647f43476c9756d7f3d1f45d47973d2a0/tomato-toilet.jpg" height="1100px" width="700px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))
<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/750/q/94/i/5f551603d79540d2ac7e0a3d26526534aa389d00300f9967f0a9aecbfd8fe892/IMG_3287.jpg" height="700px" width="950px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))She woke up, [[hungry]] for [[dinner]]. (enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))She cut a [[potato|bread]] into two cubes, one for the [[refrigerator]] (covered in tinfoil, of course) and one for the stove. She cut four slices of black olives to make the burners. A butter tab formed her sink, and [[a chive was her faucet]].
Alas, an ogre, wearing a red crown, knocked at the [[door]].
(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))She screamed, “Go away, I’m [[working|peanut butter]]!”(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))
<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/750/q/94/i/e865c447bca31f8902080de14735ba48397c738f1b2cd4f0e9e2c577dde9e83c/IMG_3285.jpg" height="700px" width="1000px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))My grandma is 95 years old. Her birthday is on April 30th. She has been through a lot of medical scares, and now one of the things she's dealing with is pretty much only being able to eat [[soft]]foods. There are a long list of ingredients and textures that are hard for her to swallow. Sometimes she even struggles with bread. I'm not even sure if she can have [[peanut butter]]--she says it gets stuck to the roof her mouth. But, she loves my dad's mashed [[potato|dinner]]es. It's one of my favorites too.
She also hasn't been allowed to eat a lot of salt because it's not good for her heart. So, for her 95th birthday, she asked for a plate of the saltiest [[snacks]]--things like pickles and cured meats. (enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))
<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/750/q/94/i/48021b46d637b82f32dda067e3db4ff122459d17621f0b687a723773455ebbe3/IMG_3286.jpg" height="700px" width="950px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#5b440e)+(bg:#ffe8cc))
<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/750/q/94/i/3cb00c7c42e520230a452f0a8ebe04d9463bca2e32d398c58dfb80185f80119d/IMG_3288.jpg" height="700px" width="950px">(enchant:?page,(text-colour:#fbbdda)+(bg:#751a45))<img src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a7b5f566e409328dafab747ed214101cc068267a1bf7cbd7187571d42232b3d1/butter-sink-on-a-circular-background.jpg" height="950px" width="750px">