Janine Antoni
In my holding
Rossi & Rossi
Hong Kong
May 25–Jul 20

Bahamian-born artist Janine Antoni venerates the body as a sacred instrument, capable of channeling the ineffable energies of the feminine soul. Tactile and somatic, her practice bridges object-making and performance, employing the body as both inspiration and medium to birth a bold, disruptive physicality. In Gnaw (1992), Antoni chewed on 600-pound (272 kilogram) blocks of lard and chocolate, repurposing the residue into tubes of lipstick and heart-shaped candy boxes. In Loving Care (1993), she mopped the gallery floor with dye-soaked hair. For “In my holding,” her solo presentation at Hong Kong’s Rossi & Rossi gallery, Antoni illuminated the dynamic, revitalizing life forces that flow within the human form, bestowing the body with a transcendent power to mediate between inner and outer realities.

The exhibition opened with three bone-white skeletal sculptures from the series From the Vow Made (2015). Taking inspiration from milagros, religious Hispanic folk charms for healing and protection, Antoni fuses household objects with parts of the human skeleton. Modeled after medical-bone replicas and Antoni’s own body, these sculptures purposefully eschew intricate details, encouraging viewers to look beyond anatomical structures to ponder their spiritual dimensions. In to channel (2015), on top of an upside-down flower pot, a hollow cast of Antoni’s head pushes through the bones of the pelvis, as occurs in childbirth, while to twine (2015) depicts two serpent-like human spines on a woven rug curled in an intimate embrace. In to return (2015), perched upon the cast of a wooden stool, an upturned hand gently cradles a coccyx, the vestigial remnant of our primordial tail; its tender grasp merging our ancestral lineage with the present and manifesting a sense of continuity and connection.

In the adjoining space, Antoni’s series Gilded Gestures (2019), a collection of photographs depicting 12 earthly gestures, focused on the deconstruction of the human body: the feet, chest, rubbing hands, and throat—each uniquely framed with gilded, Gothic-like arches shaped in clay from bones in the corresponding parts of the bodies. Evoking the ornate, golden frames characteristic of Baroque religious paintings, they provide a window to the metaphysical and the divine. The series draws inspiration from the practice of ecstatic dance, which envisions the body as a repository of kinetic histories, expressing emotion and memory through movement. The mixed-media work I touch your listening (2019) depicts the hand of Antoni’s mother softly caressing her father’s earlobe. As her parents’ access to language and memory diminished with age, touch became a crucial, almost synesthetic form of communication. The photograph focuses on the point of contact where skin grazes skin, showcasing a silent language of love and closeness between the elderly couple. The image is bordered by a roughly square golden frame constructed from impressed casts of the ossicles (the small bones that transmit vibrations to the inner ear), a sculptural homage to the process by which sound enters the body, transforming the intangible act of listening into a corporeal form. I touch your listening captures love’s resilience in the face of impending mortality, illustrating how the most profound connections are able to overcome the limits of language and find expression within our senses.

Physical contact also holds significance as a conduit for cultivating empathy and growth. Antoni once described her mother as a peacemaker who, like many women of her generation, often stayed silent. In contrast, she says her daughter “has the confidence and the self-possession to always speak her mind.” The photograph encased in I speak up (2019) shows her daughter’s hand resting on Antoni’s gold-painted neck, her head tilted so far back that the underside of her chin is visible. The tapered gilded arch, with its pointed top, accentuates the photograph’s verticality, guiding the viewer’s gaze heavenward. With her neck exposed, Antoni’s posture evokes a silent plea, or a sacred vow, to reclaim her voice, while her daughter’s touch represents the enduring bond between generations.

For Antoni the body serves as both a vehicle of creative, self-affirming expression and a locus of profound, lived meaning. “In my holding” invited us to rediscover the wisdom of our physical selves—be it our feminine sensibilities or intergenerational ties—as a way of deepening our spiritual connections to nature and to one another, finding transcendent expressions of love and resilience in the simplicity of our bodily gestures.

Mioie Kwok is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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