Video
Cindy Hinant’s work equally embraces the relationship between gendered spaces and Minimal formats through the unexpected combination of gossip magazine images and makeup with the formal strategies of Minimal artists including Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt. From their legacy, Hinant employs several formal mechanisms, most notably in her use of the monochrome and the notion of seriality. By both embracing and subverting the monochrome she acknowledges the utopian space of Minimalism, while at the same time commenting on the commodified female sexuality seen in celebrity gossip magazines and sex tapes that proliferate in US culture. The artist’s interest in what she calls an aesthetics of violation is seen throughout several of her series of works.
Three videos that embody this theme – 1 Night in Paris (2014), Kendra Exposed (2014), and Kim Kardashian Superstar (2014) – each appropriate the sound from celebrity sex tapes, a genre of popular culture that has emerged in the past two decades. With rumors of leaked tapes used to bolster popularity, one is never certain how complicit the violation is with each subject. Hinant combines the dialogue with a monochrome screen of pink, blue, or black, colors that correspond to the DVD packaging of these sex tapes. The monochrome screens slowly fade to white over the course of the tapes, each approximately one hour in length.
-Battista, Kathy, New York New Wave: Feminist Artists in Emerging Practices, London: IB Taurus, 2019