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Fat Crush: Janine Antoni
Written by Admin Crew
July 25, 2022
Janine Antoni’s work has always had us rethinking our relationship to our bodies. The body, as a vessel, an archetype, a malleable material, and its resonant connection to other bodies has been a rich inspiration for our founder, Rachel. Back in the Brooklyn days, when Rachel was at the beginnings of Fat and the Moon, Janine was one of the first to try and test her formulations. One of the first batches of All Cream was made in Janine’s kitchen!
Image by: Grace Roselli, Pandora's BoxX Project
Janine’s work continues to stir reflection. In her latest site-specific work at the KU Field Station, the body and landscape are one, interconnecting inner and outer paths. She creates an experience where we feel how our bodies are interconnected to the land.
She writes:
Our encounter with the natural world calls us into presence. We become part of the land we traverse. It is a pilgrimage of sorts. One that’s destination is the contact of foot with earth. The contact of lungs with trees. The laying of prairie on the convex bowl of the retina at the back of the eye. The cicada’s song passing through the oval window to make our hammer, anvil, and stirrup do their staccato dance with the lyrical sway of our mammalian cochlear hair. All choreographed in their spiraling score.
A labyrinth that will take the form of the anatomy of the human ear will be walked into the landscape with the help of the public. Under the guidance of ecologists at the KU Field Station, we will perform a gentle prairie reset, within the parameters of the path. Before beginning this process, we looked to Indigenous wisdom which tells us that burning helps to encourage the biodiversity of the land’s former prairie ecology.
Images by: Mike Gunnoe, ©Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas.
We are so excited to share Janine’s work with you; an example of embodiment as a way of listening, and maybe, hearing the thrum of our interconnection. Follow @janine_antoni on instagram and visit janineantoni.net for more on Janine’s mesmeric work.
