Program
Going out with a blast of “Untamed” artists, Grokhovsky wrapped up programming with Tara White (Philadelphia), Ayana Evans (NYC, Chicago), and Christen Clifford (NYC). The night brought irreverent, uncanny, perverse, and stupendously feminist works.
Artist Statements
Tara White’s “Goat Girl” is stubborn, dirty, rude, lewd, and crude. She will eat you out of the house, leave you naked and homeless. Goat Girl EXPLORES the crevices, INTERROGATES the nooks, CHALLENGES the crannies, and QUESTIONS her sanity! Can this unruly goat be tamed? We hope not.
In “Apples” Ayana Evans explores the western need for the consumption of other cultures by eating apple slices (a Biblical reference) and wrapping herself in a pure white sheet, accompanied by contemporary r&b music. Ayana’s work consists of performance (often relational) arts practices that examine experiences and presumed knowledge that are lived through her body. Art is her continuous and direct attempt for productive personal connections that break down barriers which are merely social constructs.
In Wolf Woman, Christen Clifford explores the divide between our daily performance of the self and the animal body; the concept of the primitive mother; interspecies transformation; the use of animal skins in fashion; and human relationship to technology. She uses fur and glue to communicate intimately with the audience. Clifford’s work investigates sexuality, gender, and power.
Bios
Tara White was born in the “Groundhog Capitol of the World”, Punxsutawney, PA. She is an interdisciplinary artist and film/video maker based in Brooklyn, New York and Philadelphia, PA. She received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. She has a BFA in Photography from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in (2007), a B.A. in Film, and a B.A. in Integrative Arts from Penn State University (2004). Her art works and films have been exhibited and screened widely in the US and internationally.
Ayana Evans is a NYC based performance artist. She frequently visits her hometown of Chicago whose Midwestern and sometimes controversial reputation is a major influence on her art. Evans received her MFA in painting from Temple University and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2014 she co-founded and began curatorial work with Social Health Performance Club. Evans’s recent performances include: “Practice, Practicing and the Perpetual Becoming…,” SMFA, Boston, “Over Under LIMBO,” TransModern Performance Festival, Baltimore, and “Time Distortion & Body,” PPL, Brooklyn.
Christen Clifford is a feminist performance artist, writer, curator, professor, actor, and mother. Her work has been shown at The New Museum, The Culture Project, PS 122, Galapagos Art Space, Panoply Performance Laboratory, IV Soldiers, BPAF, Dixon Place, Grace Exhibition Space, Judith Charles Gallery, outside at Dia: Beacon, Postmasters Gallery and abroad in Slovenia, Canada and across the US. Called “Hilarious and uncensored” by Flavorpill and written about in The New York Times, Art in America, Bust, Artforum, and The Sluttist. She is a member of the feminist performance collective the No Wave Performance Task Force, whose Feminist Public Action “We Wish Ana Mendieta Was Still Alive” was called a “Best of 2014” by Hyperallergic. Clifford was a panelist for The Feminist Art Project’s day of panels in Chicago in 2014; and was a panelist for The Brooklyn Museum’s Brooklyn ArtTalk on Performance Art and Activism. She is a curator of Experiemnts and Disorders at Dixon Place, and has been a visiting scholar at NYU and currently teaches in the Theatre and Performance Dept. at SUNY Purchase. Awards and grants include NYFA, NYSCA, Best of Fringe, Audience Award and the NonFiction Award from the New School, where she received her MFA. Partner of writer McKenzie Wark and mother to Felix and Vera. ?
