For her notably personal project My Mother and Eye, Carmen Winant assembled hundreds of stills from films that the artist and her mother each made as teenagers driving across the US. In 1969, Winant’s mother traveled far from her family home for the first time, documenting her trip from Los Angeles to Niagara Falls on Super 8 film. In 2001, with a 35mm camera in hand, Winant chronicled her own reverse journey from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. Each of the 11 compositions shows a different exploration of recognizable landmarks, interwoven narratives, and the horizon line. The resulting montages collapse the two journeys across time and landscapes, unfolding individual experiences of newfound freedom, buoyancy, and the power of self representation. On JCDecaux bus shelters, the exhibition connects to the movement of daily transit, inviting riders and passersby to imagine their own stories of travel, transformation, and connection.
For My Mother and Eye, Winant assembled hundreds of stills from films she and her mother each made as teenagers driving across the US: one made by her mother at age 18 on a Super 8 camera and the other made on 35mm film by Winant at age 17. The resulting works explore agency and self-discovery amid familiar American landscapes–from Niagara Falls to the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by cornfields, rolling plains, coastal scenes, and dream-like episodes often seen through the looking glass of a car windshield.
Winant disrupts linear time in My Mother and Eye, creating non-sequential compositions that reflect the cyclical nature of generational stories. Echoing filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein’s practice of montage, her works unfold with their own unique rhythms and poetic aesthetics.
“My Mother and Eye is the most personal work that I’ve ever created, and yet it will exist in a more public framework than any previous exhibition,” Winant said. “In revisiting these journeys–my mom’s and my own–I am grappling with the experience of freedom, kinship, and transformation that we both encountered in the same moment in our lives, a generation apart and under very different cultural circumstances.”
The exhibition highlights the ways women experience the world and document their lives. Winant reveals mutual moments of vulnerability, independence, and the overlapping of separate but shared lived experiences between mother and daughter, mapping a journey not just of physical movement, but of emotional and ideological passage.
For Winant, the JCDecaux bus shelters serve not just as platforms for consumer marketing but as spaces for reimagining the role of photography in public space. My Mother and Eye speaks to her interest in the physicality and materiality of photography, and Winant’s creative process–in which she arranges elements by hand–reiterates her commitment to the physical realities of photography. Each composition functions as an experiment in storytelling, where the personal and political intertwine, in ways as simple as the record of two young women crossing state lines.
“My Mother and Eye brings intimate, personal histories into public view. Through the exhibition, Carmen Winant offers a compelling look at the power of self-representation, the essential influence of familial relationships, and the ways in which women document uneven access to our own agency across generations,” said Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress.
Public space plays a critical role in Winant’s work, aligning with her desire to bring stories of women and their lived experiences into the public eye.
“The more I work in public space, the more essential it feels,” said Winant. “Exhibiting on JCDecaux bus shelters allows the work to connect with people in the flow of everyday life. These are landscapes of personal and political freedom, shared with the public as they travel, commute, and move through the city.”
Carmen Winant: My Mother and Eye is curated by Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress.
Exact locations, and installation images from all three cities can be found at the Public Art Fund website.