Janine Antoni

to channel, 2015

Polyurethane resin

27 x 15 x 15 inches (68.6 x 38.1 x 38.1 cm)

To wear your mother’s pelvic bones as a collar is to adorn yourself with a memory. A moment once had, but not remembered. Antoni stills that moment when the baby’s head is of the world yet its body is still of the mother. Although we become separate bodies, we continue to negotiate those two spheres: that of the mother, and that of the world.

During childbirth, the soft membrane on a newborn’s head allows the give and take between the bones of the baby’s skull and the pelvic bones of the mother. Called “molding”, this process facilitates the baby’s birth.

In this sculpture, Antoni’s bust is hollowed into a vessel and fuses to a flowerpot. Creating a passageway between the flowerpot’s hole and the soft membrane, the two vessels join to become an hourglass. Like an umbilical cord, this passageway connects one vessel to the other.