Butterfly Kisses

Have you heard of butterfly kisses? It is when your beloved one rapidly opens and closes his/her eyes, brushing his/her lashes onto your face. Displayed at MoMa’s temporary exhibition on , Janine Antoni has created a beautiful piece of artwork based on the visual trace left by butterfly kisses. She coated her eyelashes with many layers of Cover Girl Thick Lash Mascara and fluttered them against the paper. An average of sixty winks was applied per day and the piece was completed after approximately 2,124 winks, made over many months. So much is the effort put into this piece that it is regarded as a labor–intensive response to time.

I imagine that she has long eyelashes, curley hair and rebellient nature, giggling as she tenderly left a print, and another, and another.

The butterfly kisses were carefully arranged to have their left wings brushed onto the left hand side of the canvas and their right wrings brushed on the right side, leaving a thin blank vertical margin at the center. I can almost capture every fluttering movement of her eyes from the prints that’s left on the paper.

Such is the recording of romance, a sensation that can then be transmitted from the artist, to the viewer. I would love this piece, for its capability to transform a subtle sensation onto print its ability to engage everyone’s imagination, as what is most private is the easiest to be touched. Make the invisible visible, I think she has achieved it.

- comment from a non-critical viewer, yanyan