Since the mid-1990s, New York–based artist Janine Antoni has employed her body as a tool, in her words, to create art. In her "Lick and Lather" series, shown here, Antoni molded her own likeness in soap and chocolate, before bathing with the former and licking the latter until the surfaces were abraded and her features obscured. "Lick and Lather" thus upends portrait traditions premised on likeness by erasing the subject and posing questions about cultural definitions of feminine identity.
Lick and Lather
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Object Details
- Date
- (1993-1994)/(refabricated 2007)
- Artist
- Janine Antoni, Bahamian, b. Freeport, 1964
- Exhibition History
- HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. "At the Hub of Things: New Views of the Collection," 16 October 2014-24 April 2016, no cat.
- HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. "Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection," 9 June 2016-6 August 2017, no cat.
- See more items in
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection
- School
- International Contemporary
- Credit Line
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2001
- Data Source
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- Accession Number
- 01.9
- Type
- Sculpture
- Medium
- Chocolate and soap
- Dimensions
- Lick: 22 1/2 × 15 1/4 × 9 7/8 in. (57.2 × 38.7 × 25.1 cm) Lather: 20 1/2 × 13 7/8 × 9 3/8 in. (52.1 × 35.2 × 23.8 cm)
- Metadata Usage
- Not determined
- Record ID
- hmsg_01.9