Antoni was born on 19th January 1964 in a city named Freeport in Bahamas. She is a contemporary artist and she likes to use her body as a tool, whether it involves using her head or her hair or her face or mouth in her artwork. Janine Antoni is also the mentor at Columbia university school of arts. 1
The work that I have chosen to discuss in my essay is Janine Antoni's sculpters titled “lick and lather” which are a self portrait of the artist made in chocolate and soap. I wanted to discuss this work of art because it really strikes me how a person can create such amazing self-portrait sculpters and then re-sculpts them in a totally unique way. Creating seven busts with chocolate and seven with soap and then re-sculpting them in a totally opposite way is what attracts me to know
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So for the first bust she made a cast out of chocolate which was of thirty five pounds and poured the chocolate into the mold. After that she re-sculpted the mold by licking the front part of the mold from the mouth up to the eye, then to the ear and hair bun and then the neck. For the second bust she used soap and cast her image into it. Then she washed the bust in the tub, slowly and gradually the features on the bust started to wash away.
The procedure of licking creates an arousal of sexual desire and the desire to be loved, as the chocolate itself is a very desirable material and the endorphins produce the desire to be loved. As for the second bust of soap, it was like a procedure of cleaning yourself, purifying yourself from all bad.5
Antoni's work is both sculpture and performance art. She transforms everyday activities like bathing and eating into ways that can create art and using her own body as a tool for making these sculptures is totally unique in it's own way. Not only it is striking to lick yourself and wash yourself but it is also intimating and