April Winter

April Winter lives on an island on the west coast of Canada where she works from her small forest encircled studio. Her projects concentrate on developing techniques in self-portraiture and film photography as well as bridging the gap between the viewer and her different fantasy worlds.

Most of her props and sets, including her studio, are self-built and crafted. Themes such as isolation, utopia, space exploration and sexuality inspire her when creating her props and tableaux-like sets. April explains, “My work is primarily based on self-portraiture shot on film. I create whimsical, bite-size sets, digesting the world around me to create these tableaux like worlds. I also create characters that stare back into the camera as if the viewer is a voyeur into that world. I try to straddle the line between what is visually attractive and what is repulsive, awkward or strange, aiming to alter people’s preconceived ideas of people, places and concepts. In the past year, I’ve been focusing on how isolation affects the mind, playfully combining this with themes of space, dissociation and depression. About the series shown here, “Exodus to Europa”, she says “My most recent work in progress is a photo series about a fictional expedition to colonise another terrestrial place. It explores what types of fashion, statuses, biases and ideologies we’d bring with us and how those things would change over time as we adapt to a new way of living.”

Find more of April’s art at aprilwinter.com