Artist Ayana Evans’ Performance With Stamps Students, Rebekah Modrak
During the Fall 2020 semester, New York-based performance artist Ayana Evans created a new work of performance art for video as part of the Stamps School’s Witt Visiting Artist program. Evans is known for her guerilla-style street performances and public interventions where she uses her physicality to express ideas about the body, race and gender. She directed the filmed performance of “Better Be Good To Me” via Facetime on Oct. 25, 2020.
A video of the performance “You Better Be Good to Me,” premiered as part of Evans’ Penny Stamps Speaker Series talk on Friday, January 22. The program was part of the 2021 U‑M Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Symposium.
For the performance, students in professor Rebekah Modrak’s “Dressing Up and Down” course created costumes for the performance as a key component of Evans’ Witt visit.
”Ayana uses her body to express discomfort and joy — and we can see this through the students and dancers that participated in making the film,” Modrak said.