Winnie Herbstein

Winnie Herbstein. Photo: Matthew Arthur Williams

Winnie Herbstein graduated from Glasgow School of Art (Environmental Art). Formerly a committee member at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. Herbstein studied on the Women in Construction course at the City of Glasgow College and is a founding member of Slaghammers, a woman, trans and non-binary metal workshop. Her work focuses on historical and contemporary forms of organising, in relation to housing and the architecture and formation of space. She was a resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2021-2023).

In 2024, Herbstein and René Boer where part of the research project Contemporary Conflict within the fellowship Community and Conflict in an Urban Environment, a collaboration between Framer Framed and the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam.

She is the initiator and co-editor of the book, Slamming Doors. On Falling Out and Fighting Back in a Housing Crisis (2025), co-published by Framer Framed and The University of Edinburgh. The starting point for Slamming Doors is a trilogy of short films made Herbstein in Glasgow between 2018 and 2021: Studwork (2018), Minutes (2019) and Dampbusters (2021) grew out of an interest in who builds the spaces we inhabit, what meditations on community organising, reproductive labour, histories of housing struggles, and how we record, disseminate and learn from these stories.