Janine Antoni

Slumber, 1993

Performance with loom, yarn, bed, nightgown, polysomnogram machine and artist’s REM reading

Dimensions variable

Antoni transforms the fleeting act of dreaming into a sculptural process. Between 1994 and 2000, the artist slept while a polysomnogram machine recorded her eye movement. During the day, Antoni would sit at the loom and weave shreds of her nightgown in the pattern of her REM. The patterns were woven into the blanket that covered the bed where the artist slept at night.

In developing Slumber, the artist researched dreams from the vantage point of mythology, art history, psychoanalysis, and science. Through her performance, she uses mythology to reinterpret the scientific. As Antoni discusses – “Science had made a machine for the body to make a drawing. I love the idea that if art comes from the unconscious, then this particular drawing is coming straight from the unconscious onto the page without an intercession of the conscious mind.”