Winant, Carmen

American, b. 1983

BiographyCarmen Winant creates collages and installations that explore feminist themes of survival, power, and rebellion. Instead of producing her own images, she assembles vast collections of found photographs sourced from second-wave feminist publications, medical books, and institutional archives. Her large-scale installations suggest an impossibility of capturing complex human experiences in a single photograph. By recontextualizing these images, Winant challenges conventional perceptions of women’s power, pleasure, labor, and liberation. "To be a decent artist is to be able to imagine," she told White Hot Magazine. "To be a feminist is, in some sense, to occupy the same task."

The work in the MoCP's permanent collection was created for the 2021 exhibition Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency. In this piece, Carmen Winant used three large freestanding Plexiglas panels to showcase dozens of assembled images of individuals experiencing pleasure. Many of the images, sourced from alternative publications and journals produced during the 1970s feminist movement, challenge the false portrayals of the erotic often seen in mainstream media. These visuals are interspersed with excerpts from two key essays: Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic(1978) and Linda Williams’s Make Love, Not War: Jane Fonda Comes Home (1968–1978) (2008). Williams's essay outlines the revolutionary shift in understanding the female body during the 1970s, drawing on rigorous sexology research that replaced previous masculinist standards. Lorde's essay argues that by embracing the erotic, women can lead fuller, more empowered lives, reaching greater excellence. Together, the installation portrays the female body as one capable of both experiencing sexual pleasure and wielding power, presenting these two concepts as intertwined and in defiance of efforts to politicize and suppress female sexuality.

Carmen Winant received an MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA in Art from California College of Arts (2011). She received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2019. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Sculpture Center, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáno, Mexico City; to name a few. Winant’s work is in the permanent collections of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and others.

Carmen Winant was a 2019 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in photography. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Daegu Photo Biennale, Daegu, North Korea; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; and the Wexner Art Center, Columbus, OH; among many others.

Published 6/16/2022