‘A Legacy of Textures and Sun’ Ayana Evans x Anina Major

During the closing ceremony of the 2021 Socrates Annual: Sanctuary, the piece ‘Haven No. 3’ by Anina Major will facilitate a performance by Ayana Evans titled ‘A Legacy of Textures and Sun.’ Utilizing the performative nature of Major’s installation, Evans activates Haven No. 3 with a piece inspired by “The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson. Evan’s performances often use her own body to claim and demand space for black women in society and Major’s sculpture inspired by the protective shield built for Angela Davis sets the appropriate stage to do so.

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About Ayana Evans:

Ayana Evans is a NYC based performance artist. Her recent press includes: The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, and New York Magazine’s The Cut. Evans was also featured in or edited of the following publications: “We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World,” by Jasmin Hernandez with forward by Swizz Beats, 2020 – features interviews with 50 contemporary artists of color,  “Institution as Verb,” Edited by Elizabeth Lamb, Ayana Evans (myself), Esther Neff and Tsedaye Makonnen,  “Volume 11 Friend of the Arts” Edited by Thomas Flynn II, and “Re-Envisioning The Contemporary Art Cannon: Perspectives in a Global World” Edited by Ruth Iskin, 2017.

In 2015 she received the Jerome Foundation’s Theater and Travel & Study Grant for artistic research abroad. Evans has performed at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Crystal Bridges, Newark Museum, the Queens Museum and countless public locations for her guerilla style performances.Her international work includes participation in:  FIAP performance festival in Martinique, The Pineapple Show at Tiwani Contemporary in London, and Ghana’s Chale Wote festival which drew 30,000 people. Evans was a 2018 Fellow in the Studio Immersion Program at EFA’s Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, as well as, a 2018 resident and grant recipient at Artists Alliance Inc (NYC), 2017-2018 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance art (one of the highest awards in performance art within the United States), 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, a 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2021-22 Professor of the Practice at Brown University. Her past residencies include Yaddo, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center.