Janine Antoni

DD The material you used in the sculpture was significant.

JA Yes, the sculpture was cast in copper, calling to mind copper plumbing pipes as well as copper architectural details. The metal oxidized and changed color when it came into contact with my urine, so the object’s patina is a natural result of this action. By using the gargoyle in relationship to my body, I equate myself with the architecture. For, just as I have memories of being entertained by stories of the high seas, I also remember the Franciscan nuns in school telling me, “Your body is a temple.” I took the convergence of these memories literally.

DD So you gained access to the Chrysler Building, where you had yourself photographed on the 61st floor peeing through the copper gargoyle.

JA It was definitely a wild and exhausting session that took endless hours and a lot of patience on the part of everyone involved. The Chrysler Building acts as a pedestal for my exuberant gesture. It made me think of Yves Klein’s photograph Leap Into the Void [1960].

Maybe my attempt to confront the existential void is tempered by comic relief. Humor is useful because it exposes self-consciousness without pretension. It allows us to get closer to things that make us feel uncomfortable, such as our demons, our bodily fluids and our desire for power.

DD We debated the pros and cons of humor in art at our panel at the 2007 College Art Association conference, where we were joined by Jeanne Silverthorne, Jane Hammond, Fred Tomaselli and Charles Long. Jane’s remark, that “it’s important for a woman to appear serious, so as to be taken seriously,” and Jeanne’s equally astute observation, that “humor is inherently political, anarchistic, and irreverent,” still feel right, as does your comment at the time that “humor has never been a goal, but something you side-step into.”

JA I agree with Jane. I was concerned at the beginning of my career, particularly given the extreme nature of my early works, about being taken seriously. I was consciously challenging art historical canons and engaging in cultural critique. It was my ’80s art school education coming through. But at the center of all of that seriousness, I would be licking a representation of myself in chocolate or something equally absurd. There was something consistent in the work, a kind of intentional misunderstanding. Contrary to most people’s perception of Gnaw, my interaction with huge cubes of chocolate and lard was a playful gesture.

DD Which brings up the corporeal dimension of the work. You have said that when you moved from the Bahamas to Florida to attend school, you noticed that your body language was not the body language of someone raised in the United States. Has that translated at all into your work?

JA Coming from the Caribbean Islands, I was painfully aware that, by American standards, I always get too close to other people. I really can’t make a point without touching someone. It’s a form of emphasis that transcends words. In the work it’s more extreme. I long for connection and see my objects as occupying the space between the viewer and myself. To be intimate with the object is to touch the viewer. It’s always a profound experience for me to sit down in the subway and feel the warmth of the person who sat there before me. Some people might be repelled, but for me, it’s really comforting that, on some basic level, we all produce warmth. I make art because it centers me in my body, and by doing so I hope to offer that experience to someone else. This direct physical experience is one of the rare things that art can offer in a culture of mediation.

It’s through the body that I reach my unconscious—through dance, meditation and yoga. The body holds memory differently than the mind. For me, creativity is about unlocking memories within the body. It’s also about thinking with the body.

I wonder sometimes whether our bodies are our own. If our bodies are made up of ancestral DNA, then memory could be vast, especially if our bodies recapitulate the genetic fabric of, say, our great-grandmothers. So when we speak about the unconscious, we should consider the collective unconscious and the memories we share when looking at an artwork, which could be the site of confluence between the artist and the viewer.

DD Given that most of your performances happen in real time, control is relative and surprises inevitable.

JA Sometimes I have to get out of the way. It’s beyond letting go of control. It’s about waiting and following one’s intuition. The creative process is a mystery, something that seems to happen on the periphery of thought. When conceiving a work, I don’t try to home in on it too quickly. In fact, I do the opposite. I try to stay as open as possible for as long as I can. This state is full of potential, but it’s a terrifying place, too, because all I really want is for my ideas to solidify. I have so much doubt and fear, and yet the more I can just watch the unfolding with a light touch, the more the piece seems to make itself. At a certain unexpected point, something comes to the forefront.

The work I’m making at the moment—a photographic series called “Inhabit”—is an example of the circuitous route my creative process often takes. It came to me first as a very simple image. I imagined that a spider had created its web between my legs. As I started to research the process of actualizing this image, things became complicated. Would a spider actually cooperate? How would I remain still in order to facilitate its weaving? After speaking with several entomologists, and learning about the extreme sensitivity of spiders to motion, I looked into getting a harness that would immobilize me. That led me to the world of harnesses, where I found a particular design that enabled me to be attached to a structure from many points on my torso. I realized that my body could be suspended in a way similar to a spider in its web. But I would need to build a cage around my legs in order to keep the spider in that particular area of my body. And it also became apparent that the spider would be too sensitive to build directly on my body due to body heat.

It’s worth mentioning that, from the beginning, I equated the spider and its web with my daughter, and myself, the mother, with the support structure. Suddenly I thought of turning the spider’s cage into a doll’s house, as a way of incorporating the spider into the photograph. I now have an image that is a web within a web, a house within a house.

DD After years of exploring your relationship to your original nuclear family, particularly to your mother, you now seem to be focusing on your own maternal role. You now have a daughter, who’s five.

JA In my mind it is no leap to imagine the womb as primordial architecture. I’m structured so that I have room for another to dwell inside me: a quintessentially female experience. I was also thinking about the dollhouse, with its open wings, in relation to the design of religious altarpieces, which can mirror church architecture. And one of the sources for “Inhabit” is the Madonna della Misericordia, or the Virgin of Mercy. In paintings, she is depicted as enveloping her followers in her mantle, creating a space that resembles the apse of a church.