Touch

Janine Antoni was born in 1964 in Freeport, Bahamas, and she lives and works in Brooklyn.

Thinking about what the horizon means to us: it’s sort of a place of contemplation. But for me, I’m interested in it as a place that doesn’t really exist—that if we were to try to go to that place, the horizon would just recede further. 

Janine Antoni views her art as an ongoing process, much like the daily tasks that make up our lives. Through performance and sculpture, often in combination, she addresses issues related to feminism, labour, and viewer participation. 

In Touch (2002), the artist walks on a tightrope, strung up along the beach outside her childhood home in the Bahamas. Antoni learned to walk on the tightrope specifically for the artwork - at times, she is on the brink of losing her balance, but embraces the state of imbalance and eventually makes it to the other side. For each step she takes, the tightrope sinks down and appears to become one with the horizon line. In these moments, Antoni seemingly achieves the impossible feat of walking along the horizon. The coastline and the tightrope together create an expanded space, a borderland that is both Antoni’s childhood home and a wider connection to the world. In the opening quote above, the artist tells us about her relationship to the horizon depicted in the artwork. To her, it is a a place for internal contemplation and at the same time a place that does not exist in the physical world, but rather a symbol of eternal travel.

Text: Sofia Ringstedt, curator at Magasin III