Ayana Evans

Evans grew up in Chicago; her mother and father, both behavioural health therapists, were from Alabama and Mississippi respectively.[1] She has described the influence that her family's history has had on her work: "what happened in my family as slaves, as black people who had overcome so much just to be what is considered 'normal' by American financial standards".[2]

Evans holds an MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has an Associates degree in Accessories Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Evans has performed at museums, galleries, and performance art festivals in the United States and Africa, including Newark Museum, Queens Museum, Bronx Museum, Barnes Foundation, Medium Tings Gallery,[3][4] Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space,[5] NADA on Governor's Island,[6] Panoply Performance Lab,[7] FIAP Martinique, Movement Research Performance Festival 2016 & 2018, and Ghana's Chale Wote festival. She is known for the ongoing public performances and series of interventions "Operation Catsuit" and "I Just Came Here to Find a Husband".[8][9][10] In 2017, she staged a 10 hour endurance based, citywide performance and, in the museum lobby, a 100 person performative dinner party[11] as an integral part "A Person of the Crowd." The exhibition was a performance art survey featuring Marina Abramovic, Tania Bruguera, and William Pope L., among others at in the Barnes Foundation.[12][13] Internationally she has participated in Ghana's Chale Wote festival which drew 30,000 people, FIAP performance festival in Martinique, and The Pineapple Show at Tiwani Contemporary in London.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 global health crisis, Evans shifted her performance practice to Zoom and IGLive performing at Inverse Performance Festival,[14] "Performance-in-Place: 4 Bodies 1 Screen" at The 8th Floor, Wa Na Wari,[15] and Company Gallery, among others.

She has also spoken at Black Portraitures.[16]

According to Michael Boyce Gillespie, the author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film (Duke University Press, 2016), and Lisa Uddin, author of Zoo Renewal: White Flight and the Animal Ghetto (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) Evans work responds to "the pressures of the modern art world and the misogynoir gaze."[27] Ruth E. Iskin, Professor, Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel writes that her "public guerrilla performances have often forced white, middle-class art audiences into an uncomfortable proximity with urban, African-American identity."[28]

Evans centers her work around the intimate stories of black womanhood, exploring the social constructs of her own life. Trained as a painter and in fashion, color theory, texture, and fashion influence her work. Often her performances incorporate brightly colored fabrics, plastic tiaras, high heels, make-up, foodstuffs, and found objects to further engage viewers and to ground the work in both queer and popular culture. Evans uses her performance practice as a vehicle for change, as a performer, in comparison to a painter, she felt more enabled to confront “people who are unaware of their classism, people who are unaware of their racism, people who really don’t support black women, people who have a lot of gender bias and don’t support trans women, people who I think just need their eyes opened a little more.”[1]

Ayana Evans is an adjunct professor in the visual art department at Brown University[35] and the editor-at-large of Cultbytes, an online art publication.

Evans co-edited Institution is a Verb: A Panoply Performance Lab Compilation, published by The Operating System, with Esther Neff, Tsedaye Makonnen, and Elizabeth Lamb. Seph Rodney, staff writer at Hyperallergic, praised the book as "a historical archive relating how the artists of PPL used that space to come into their powers and learn how to breathe fire.” About the publications importance Martha Wilson commented: "It's imperative [to document ephemeral art practice] if contemporary visual art performance is to be understood and analyzed in the future. The work of Panoply Performance Laboratory, which presented artists from 2012 to 2018, stands as a model organization, responsible for galvanizing the community it served."[36]