On August 26th, 2020 video documentation from Zoom presentation A Celebration of the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage in the USA with Ayana Evans, Hee Ran Lee, Morgan O’Hara.

Recorded on Zoom, edited by Yoon Cho, 2020 Fall Intern.

A night with Ayana Evans, Hee Ran Lee, Morgan O’Hara, and Martha Wilson
in commemoration of the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage in the USA

Franklin Furnace continues to adapt and has built a digital space where artists whose physical venues have closed may present their work. This new virtual space, The Franklin Furnace Digital Loft, will enable artists to present their work to the worldwide public and engage in conversation with our community. In order to continue supporting artists during the changes wrought by COVID19, The Digital Loft has been conceived and designed to use new media to undertake unforeseen new projects and to build and engage our community. Franklin Furnace remains committed to staying ahead of the curve and the Digital Loft is our newest effort to continue making the world safe for avant-garde art.

Franklin Furnace was invited by Mary Anne Carter, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, to participate in Forward into Light, a unique public art project spearheaded by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission to commemorate on August 26, 2020 the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment securing women’s constitutional rights to vote.

In this very special night emceed by Martha Wilson, we presented the work of FF Alums: Ayana Evans, Hee Ran Lee, and Morgan O’Hara. The performances were followed by a talkback and Q&A with the artists moderated by Martha Wilson.

Event Program

Introduction and Ribbon Cutting by Harley Spiller

Introduction by Arantxa Araujo

This event will be emceed by Martha Wilson

Introduction by Martha Wilson

Words by Laurie Cumbo, NYC Council Majority Leader

SPANGLE THIS: BLACK WOMEN COULDN’T VOTE IN 1920
by Ayana Evans

Insook 2020
by Hee Ran Lee

HERE AND NOW
by Morgan O’Hara

Q&A by Martha Wilson with Evans, Lee and O’Hara

Closing words by Martha Wilson

Artist Bios

Ayana Evans

is a NYC based artist. She received her MFA in painting from Temple University and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. Evans has performed at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Newark Museum, the Queens Museum and countless public locations for her guerilla style performances. Her international work includes show at FIAP performance festival in Martinique, Tiwani Contemporary in London, and Ghana’a Chale Wote festival. Evans was a 2018 Fellow at EFA’s Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, 2017-2018 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance art, and a 2018 NYFA Fellow. Her recent press includes: The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Hyperallergic, and CNN. Evans is currently an adjunct professor at Brown University.

Hee Ran Lee

(born.1981, Seoul) is performance artist whose body-centered work explores private and public gestures of the Asian female body in the patriarchal power structure and investigates cultural marginalization. She was the recipient of Franklin Furnace Award in New York in 2014, and ARKO Young Art Frontier Grant from Arts Council Korea (Seoul 2013). She has had performances at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (Bronx 2018), Montreal Arts Interculturels (Montreal 2017), Fergus Mccaffrey Gallery (New York 2017), Grace Exhibition Space (New York 2013), The Watermill Center (New York 2012), Defibrillator Gallery (Chicago 2012), and Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai 2011). She was a fellow artist of LEIMAY 2014-2015, 2016-2017 at CAVE in New York. She holds an MFA specializing in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Morgan O’Hara

was born in Los Angeles and grew up in post-war Japan. She lived in Europe for 25 years, returning to New York in 2010. Direct and minimal aspects of Japanese aesthetic practices have had a strong influence on her work. She currently lives in New York and works extensively internationally. She perfomed at the Franklin Furnace in 1989. In January 2017 she began a social practice called HANDWRITING THE CONSTITUTION which was honored by a full page article in the New York Times and articles in many other publications. www.handwritingtheconstitution.com The handwriting practice continues to grow across the United States and internationally. O’Hara’s work is in the permanent collections of the British Museum London, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Hammer Museum Los Angeles, National Gallery in Washington DC. et al, and in many important private collections. She has received grants from the Gottleib Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement, Milton and Sally Avery Award, Fessenden Foundation fellowship.