Honey Baby: Exhibition Review

Honey Baby is a video art piece made by the collaborative team work by Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio. Janine Antoni is a performance artist who also does work in sculpture, dance form, and video.  Her work often deals forms of human connection and the relationship to religion, the body, gender, and other such topics. Stephen Petronio on the other hand is a choreographer, dance artist, and performance artist. His work is more concerned with the sense of identity through the expression of the body in dance. The sense of self by acknowledging the entire body is an important aspect to consider, especially if you think about how people conduct most of their interactions and construct Identities through the interface of digital technology. These artist have a history of collaboration, with projects like Gestures in Dance and Like Lazarus. Honey Baby however was inspired by sonograpths of Antoni’s nieces’ baby. Sonography are imbued with feelings of intimacy and the work recreates that intimacy on another scale.   

The work is a 14 minute video in which a nude dancer is positioning himself around a metal tube. The work was installed in the Sheppard’s gallery as a projection in a smaller room that was recently added. The room is enclosed in by four walls and had little to no lighting. The only source being the projection.  This creates the sense of being surrounded by a mother’s womb and it creates a space that in any other context would be relatively uncomfortable. This creates an immersive environment the circular background is set in amber colors, creating a sense of warmth and intimacy that contrasts with the dark shadows of the tube and silhouette of the dancer. There is also a sticky substance that coats both the tube and the dancer, symbiotic of embryotic fluid The sound component is a combination of  breathes and heartbeats, imitating the sounds most likely heard by the baby from the mother. The movement of the dancer is slow but calming, steadily rotating around the space.

The video is supposed to relay the intimacy of the image of a sonograpth through this video. The work also conveys that intimacy of the relationship between the mother and child though the simplicity of body movements. The baby and mother of cannot directly talk to each other, but the baby’s movements is a form of communication to the mother. And the baby is able to hear the sounds the mother creates through her breathing, heartbeat and other stimuli within her body. The imagery is an interesting contrast to what an actual sonograpth looks like. Again, the sense of intimacy is associated with that image, but its seen through the use of a machine. Its also a still image of the baby, so unless you are present at the actual sonogram, the baby’s movements is not usually part of that association. Honey Baby’s warm colors and video of the dancer’s movements provide the viewer a deeper understanding or at least the feeling of intimacy between the mother and child.