Ayana Evans and Tsedaye Makonnen. Image courtesy the artists.
Tickets $0-$25, pay what you can
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Episode 1: Fri, June 14 at 7 P.M.
feat. Autumn Knight, Kamikaze Jones with Geo Blake, and Kat Sotelo
Episode 2: Sat, June 15 at 7 P.M.
feat. Alicia Grullon, Candice Hoyes, and Martha Wilson
For CPR's annual Spring Movement, Ayana Evans curates Giving You the Best That We Got: The Ayana & Tsedaye Variety Show (with Tsedaye on Video). This talk show-style performance extravaganza will be like Oprah meets Miami Vice… but more neon! In previous iterations collaborator and co-creator Tsedaye Makonnen was involved as a co-host and curator; this time Makonnen will be our video correspondent.
The Variety Show at CPR – filmed before a live studio audience! – will feature live performances by artists working at the intersection of performance and visual art across two unique episodes, featuring Autumn Knight, Kamikaze Jones with Geo Blake, and Kat Sotelo on Friday night’s episode and Alicia Grullon, Candice Hoyes, and Martha Wilson on Saturday night’s episode. Get ready for commercial and yawn breaks, shag carpeting, and emotional sit-and-talks with everyone’s favorite performance artists!
In addition to the live Variety Show, the Premier American Performance Art Museum (PAPAM), founded by Esther Neff in 2024, will be on view in CPR’s Storefront Gallery beginning at 6pm each night. Works on view will include relics and ephemera by Marcelline Mandeng Nken, Dominique Duroseau, and more artists to be announced.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ayana Evans is a NYC-based performance artist. 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 2017-18 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance, 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, 2021-22 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 an upcoming performance and class visit at Wellesley College as part of the Taking Off the White Gloves showcasing the work of Lorraine O’Grady 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. Evans is currently a professor at Fordham College and NYU.
This program is made possible, in part, by a Late Stage Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.