"Lick and Lather" by Janine Antoni, 1993–1994
Antoni uses intimate activities to shape art and explore gender stereotypes
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
Object Details
- See more items in
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection
- School
- International Contemporary
- Date
- (1993-1994)/(refabricated 2007)
- Accession Number
- 01.9
- 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.
- Credit Line
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest Fund, 2001
- Artist
- Janine Antoni, Bahamian, b. Freeport, 1964
- 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)
- Data Source
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- Type
- Sculpture
- Metadata Usage
- Not determined
- Record ID
- hmsg_01.9
Lick and Lather
There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page .
International media Interoperability Framework
IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.
