Ayana Evans is a New York City-based interdisciplinary visual artist and activist, best known for her guerilla-style work through video, performance, and live arts. Humor and directness are hallmarks of the artist’s practice. Through her work, Evans rejects and exposes limitations and the oppressive societal structures that reinforce them, advocating instead for empathy, humanity, and lived connection.

In You gotta watch this sh*t (2018), the artist mugs for the camera—making faces that cycle through varied emotional registers and poses while wearing one of her signature neon green, zebra-striped catsuits. Her video, by turns, is funny, seductive, confrontational, and zany. The artist plays with dissonances between character and self, or what is perceived on the surface and what lies beneath. By challenging the notion that a singular, stable, authentic self exists, Evans claims space for multiplicity, complexity, and self-determination. Presented as a part of Street Views, the video is on view every evening from dusk to midnight on CAM’s facade.

The exhibition title, Teaser, not only alludes to the artist’s emotional playfulness, but also anticipates the forthcoming survey exhibition entitled Nobody’s Gonna Love You the Way I Do on view at CAM from September 10, 2026 to February 7, 2027.

Ayana Evans: Teaser is organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Dean Daderko, Ferring Foundation Chief Curator, with support from Grace Early, Exhibitions Assistant. This exhibition and Street Views are generously supported in part by the Whitaker Foundation.