Process, pleasure and the artist’s own body are central to Janine Antoni’s work, which transforms everyday bodily rituals, (eating and washing for example), into a sculptural process using materials such as chocolate, soap and lard.

‘Unveiling’ is a cast veil, which shrouded the artist’s head and shoulders and hung at a level equal to her own height. Ideas of absence and presence as well as a playful element of ‘hide and seek’ are presented in the work. The use of bronze – a traditional material of classical art – for the veil, evokes both a sense of the absurd and the psychological association of our own body to the weight of the veil. Antoni’s aim is to stimulate this kind of intimate contact with the body in order ‘…to redefine or locate the body within our culture’.*

This work was part of Antoni’s exhibition ‘Slip of the Tongue’ shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1995.

*Quotation from exhibition catalogue IMMA Glen Dimplex Artists Award 1996.