Abstract
Janine Antoni's object- and performance-based works draw from multiple influences including feminism and conceptualism, and in these works the artist has fashioned an investigation of the self through the examination of the mother/child dyad, creating a more than fourteen-year body of work about these relationships that explore the implications of feminine imagery. Antoni’s works are an effort to distinguish her body as a feminine subject-object, but also to identify with as well as separate herself from the mother. While she is a conceptual artist, Antoni puts great emphasis on materiality. For her, the concept defines itself within the materials, and it is the process of the making that interests her most, empowering what is traditionally overlooked, forgotten, or disempowered. As she alternately separates from and connects with the mother and the foremothers of the artistic heritage that have surely contributed to establishing this identity, Antoni allows new images of the female to be made visible in a culture where they have traditionally been lacking.
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