";s:4:"text";s:5410:" Once the performance began, she slowly pushed back all viewers out of the given space, leaving them to view the finished dyed floor.By using her hair as tool to mop the floor, Antoni was required to bend her body in a crouched position. If she had used a mop instead, her body would more closelyThis idea of power dynamic brings us back to Antoni referencing A peculiar thought is Antoni mopping with her long hair without actually cleaning the space. In Loving Care, Antoni mopped the floor of the gallery with her hair soaked in Loving Care hair dye “Natural Black.” The artist’s actions conjured up the expressive marks of Abstract Expressionist painting, linking them to the chore of mopping.
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?’”Lipstick display; lipstick made with pigment, beeswax and chewed lard removed from lard “Gnaw,” and heart-shaped packaging tray for chocolates made from chewed chocolate removed from chocolate “Gnaw”.“All of my objects sort of walk the line between sculpture, performance, and relic. Like any negotiation with history, the understanding of her performance, in which she dipped her long hair in black dye and set about mopping the floor, has been complicated by its initial reception. Antoni’s work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture. She then swooshes her hair across the tiled gallery floors in a lose figure eight formation, similar to the proper technique of mopping. Janine Antoni’s performance Loving Care in 1993 began with hair. She used the chewed out bits to create chocolate boxes and lipstick tubes, which she then displayed in a mock store front. In Loving Care, the artist dipped her hair in a bucket of black hair dye and, on her hands a knees, used it to mop the floor. See yourself standing with the collective audience and watching as Antoni fluidly moves back and forth, covering the floor and slowly pushing you out of the gallery room space. Transforming everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art, Antoni’s primary tool for making sculpture has always been her own body. Antoni’s work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture. She has chiseled cubes of lard and chocolate with her teeth, washed away the faces of soap busts made in her own likeness, and used the brainwave signals recorded while she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning.“I mopped the floor with my hair…The reason I’m so interested in taking my body to those extreme places is that that’s a place where I learn, where I feel most in my body. As she claimed the space, the audience was slowly backed out of the gallery. When Janine Antoni performed Loving Care in 1993, she moved herself into the history of contemporary art, and she has occupied that place ever since. Antoni explained how the tension between her body and the audience gave the most “juice” to her piece (Try to imagine yourself as one of the audience members. In her work Gnaw (1992), Antoni used her mouth and the activity of eating or chewing to carve two 600 lb (300 kg) cubes, one made of chocolate and the other of lard. I’m really interested in the repetition, the discipline, and what happens to me psychologically when I put my body to that extreme place.”“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. Janine Antoni: Loving Care & Lick and Lather Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas in 1964. Instead, the opposite occurs with Antoni marking the floor with strong, dark strokes that contrast the light gallery floor. Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas in 1964. After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital AgeBill Viola: Liber Insularum - Retrospective at MOCA
