Ayana Evans is a NYC-based performance artist, who is heavily influenced by her upbringing in Chicago, IL. Her guerilla-style performances have been staged at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Newark Museum, Queens Museum and a variety of free public locations. Her performances have been reviewed in The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, and New York Magazine's The Cut. She was a 2017-2018 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance, 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2021-22 Professor of the Practice at Brown University, and 2022 Chamberlain Award winner at Headlands Art Center. Her past residencies include Yaddo, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Evans' current projects include a recent performance series and class visit at Wellesley College as part of the Taking Off the White Gloves exhibition showcasing the work of Lorraine O’Grady, curating the Spring 2024 Movement Series at the Center for Performance Research(CPR) in Brooklyn, and the development of a arts focused career fair that has welcomed over 200 formerly incarcerated individuals and transformed the job hunting space into a fun environment in 2022 and 2023. Evans is currently an adjunct professor at Fordham University, Brooklyn College, and NYU.