Johanna Winters

Johanna Winters is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose creative practice spans moving image, drawing, sculpture, puppetry, and performance to confront gendered expressions of pleasure and disappointment. She is a 2025 MacDowell Fellows and has been awarded residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo, the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Lawrence Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, and the Women’s Studio Workshop residency in Malmö, Sweden. She is a recipient of the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award, and the 2022-23 Grant Wood Fellowship at the University of Iowa.

Winters’s work has been exhibited, performed and screened at numerous venues, including the 63rd Ann Arbor Film Festival (Ann Arbor, MI), the Jumping Frames International Movement-Image Festival (Hong Kong), the Wide Open Experimental Film Festival (Oklahoma City, OK), the Open Air Media Festival (Iowa City, IA), Herron School of Art & Design (Indianapolis, IN), University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA), H&R Block Artspace (Kansas City, MO), Drama Club (Chicago, IL), Coop Gallery (Nashville, TN), and Soo Visual Arts Center (Minneapolis, MN).

In addition to her studio practice, Winters leads puppetry workshops across the Midwest and is one half of the collaborative duo Haag Cykell—an ongoing performance series with writer and interdisciplinary artist Sarah Minor—that explores modes of storytelling through shadow-theater.

Prior to her artistic pursuits, Johanna trained as a professional cross country skier and competed on an Olympic-development ski team based in the upper Midwest.