Janine Antoni

to quench, 2015

Polyurethane resin

43 x 30 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches (109.2 x 77.5 x 36.8 cm)

Throwing back her head and sipping from the bowl of her own breast, Antoni remakes a primal memory with an impossible gesture. How can we drink from a cup and remember suckling the breast of our mother? Can we pour and drink simultaneously; can we nurture and be nurtured?

Antoni turns her breast on its face as she transforms her flesh into the surface of a cup. She articulates the contour of her chest with merely the plunge of the throat. A domestic pitcher morphs to the body and bulges out to replace the absent breast. The circuit is complete as the milk of the breast is swallowed back into the pitcher.  

This scenario sits just out of reach atop a kitchen cupboard. Looking up at the breast, we recall how the child gazes up at the mother: breast, pitcher and cupboard, all vessels of nourishment.