Janine Antoni's chocolate and soap self-portraits head to Barcelona

Fourteen versions of artist Janine Antoni's own face go back on public view in Barcelona on 22 September.

The work, called Lick and Lather, joins the group show A Force of the Past at CaixaForum in Barcelona. The showing runs to 10 January 2027, according to the artist's exhibition listing.

Lick and Lather was made in 1993. It comprises fourteen self-portrait busts, meaning sculpted heads and upper torsos, each measuring 24 x 16 x 13 inches and displayed on its own pedestal. Seven are cast in chocolate and seven are cast in soap, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. records.

Antoni shaped them with her own body. She licked the chocolate busts into form and washed with the soap busts, bathing with them, as described by the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

That leaves traces. Licking softens detail. Washing wears edges down. Each bust still looks like the artist, but no two finish the same.

Chocolate and soap do not behave like bronze or marble. They melt, crack, sweat and dissolve. Conservators at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington carried out scientific research to find the best ways to preserve the work, Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2015.

Antoni was born in Freeport in the Bahamas and received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, according to her gallery, Luhring Augustine. She has had major exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and S.I.T.E. Santa Fe in New Mexico, according to Art21.

Renewed attention has followed the work. Art in America, the United States art magazine, published a feature titled 'How Janine Antoni Simultaneously Disturbs and Delights'.

What makes this stand out for a general audience is how simple the idea is to grasp. No label needed. One material you taste. One material you wash with. Then you look for yourself in the row of faces.