Mary Evans (artist)

Mary Evans (born 1963) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in England and utilises in her subject matter both her African heritage and European upbringing.

Early life and education

Evans was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1963. After a foundation course at St Helens College of Art & Design (1981–82), she studied painting for her B.A. at Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology (1982–85), and attained her M.A. in Fine Art at Goldsmiths' College (1987–89). She subsequently did a postgraduate residency at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (1991–93).

Career

Evans has received a number of significant commissions, awards and residencies, including a Smithsonian Artists Research Fellowship, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, in 2010.[1] She typically uses paper as her medium, producing large-scale, site-specific work — sometimes with reference to highly charged subjects, such as lynching in the Deep South.[2] Her work has been exhibited extensively across the UK, as well as internationally — in the United States, the Netherlands, Mexico and China, including Farewell to Post-Colonialism at the 3rd Guangzhou Triennale in 2008,[3] Port City (2007) at the Arnolfini, Bristol, and A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad (2003), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.[4]

Reviewing her solo exhibition Cut and Paste (2012, Tiwani Contemporary, London), critic Stephanie Baptist wrote: "Her mixed media artworks reveal not just her story, but African ancestral stories that are not often told. I will liken Evans to a griot. This role is an important one, as she is both historian and storyteller. She carries the collective narratives of the village, the tragic and the triumphant. She who remembers can reinterpret the unwritten histories and share the untold stories of the un-namable that may have otherwise been forgotten."[5]

In 2020 Evans was included in the show Paper Routes: Women to Watch 2020 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.[6]

Evans is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.[4][7]

Selected exhibitions

Publications
  • Filter, London: InIVA and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 1997. ISBN 1-899846-14-X[10]

References
  1. Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program, at Mary Evans website.
  2. Olu Oguibe, The Culture Game, University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8166-4131-5, ISBN 978-0816641314
  3. Exhibition preview on Artnet.Com
  4. Mary Evans biography at Tiwani Contemporary.
  5. Stephanie Baptist, "Mary Evans | Cut and Paste", Art & Culture, 5 October 2012.
  6. Paper Routes : Women to Watch 2020 : National Museum of Women in the Arts : October 8, 2020-January 18, 2021. Washington, D. C. pp. 38–39. ISBN 9780940979536.
  7. Biography of Mary Evans, Religion & Place.
  8. Biographical note, Arnolfini.
  9. "Mary Evans". AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  10. "Filter" - Mary Evans, InIVA website. Archived 2014-02-27 at the Wayback Machine

Further reading
  • Olu Oguibe, "Studio Call: Mary Evans", Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Number 10, Spring/Summer 1999, pp. 38–39.
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