[Janine Antoni: Milagros]
You know, a lot of people don't know
what the coccyx looks like,
but really, it's the site of our severed tail.
I love the cup of the sacrum and the cup of the hand,
as if they're about to shake hands.
So this is a very unusual--and impossible--
coming together of two body parts.
The whole idea around this work was really about grafting.
When you graft one plant to another,
then they fuse together.
For years, I've been fascinated with
these things called 'milagros'.
They're found in Portugal,
in Spain, in Mexico,
and in Brazil.
The ones that people are most familiar with are
these small medallions that are shaped like
an arm, or a leg,
or a heart.
But they also have them in three dimensions.
The way they're used is that
if you have an ailment--
if you have a problem with your foot--
you would go and buy one of these,
and you'd take it to the church.
They hang them on the ceilings of the church,
so the entire ceiling is filled with body parts.
I was very inspired by these more simple milagros
that are more generalized.
In a way, that foot becomes anyone's foot.
I started with very specific pairings that I was interested in,
and then I took those gestures
and I made milagros out of them.
I mean, all the pieces have been sanded
for days and days and days.
They feel like they've been weathered
by something that seems familiar,
like a piece of sea glass in the ocean.
The fact that you feel that this thing has a history,
I think that's important.
You know, here I am, cutting the body up into parts,
and not thinking about the importance of the sever.
And so to acknowledge that sever was, I think,
crucial to whole installation.
['Within' -- Janine Antoni]
And so, the first thing that you witness
when you come into the space
is a sever--
and a very dramatic sever--
and this ascension into the ceiling.
Initially, I wanted to hang the roots from the ceiling,
and hang the milagros them.
This trunk is kind of grafted to the building itself,
and then when the trunk goes through the ceiling,
it's grafted to a table on the second floor
with milagros.
When I was a little girl,
I had an aunt--
her name was Auntie Eileen.
She came over every Tuesday to have tea--
she was English.
And, I would sit and have tea with her,
and she would teach me how to drink tea like a lady.
Part of that was learning how to cross my legs.
I thought it was funny to take the bone from one leg
and cross it with the skin of the other leg.
I sunk that bone right into the thigh
so that they are really fused together.
So in the piece, there's really no chance
of uncrossing my legs.
When you stand in front of the object,
I want you to imagine how it's been made.
And the reality is that
we are in contact with a lot of objects
and we have no idea how they are made.
Making any of my work is a form of healing--
that, in making, I can somehow locate myself
in relationship to others
and my environment.
If somebody comes along
and my work resonates for them,
that's when I feel less alone--
that I'm not as strange as I feel. [LAUGHS]