Janine Antoni

In her work Touch, the artist is seen walking on a thin rope stretched along the horizon, across from her childhood home in the Bahamas. The abstract horizon line - an object of longing and a symbol of hope, of imaginative flight and of expansion - becomes a concrete entity that can be touched and walked upon. Antoni manages to create a magical image, a parable for the existential struggle: the acrobatic balancing act between water and sky makes evident the tension between control, balance and coordination and the constant danger of disrupting it. "Balance is a fleeting state we're always striving to maintain," says the artist, describing the process of learning to balance on a tightwire. "When I began, I tried to remain steady by an act of will, but the more I fought to keep my balance, the more I would sway. I found my balance when I was loose rather than rigid [...] Walking the wire is a lesson in interconnection [...] I had always thought of the horizon as a place that could not be pinpointed or in any way fixed [...] Still, I wanted to walk in this impossible place, to walk on the line of my vision, or along the edge of my imagination."

Born in Freeport, Bahamas, 1964; lives and works in New York