The interplay between memory and history is central to Mary Evans’ practice. Her pattern, signs, symbols and pictograms are borrowed from popular culture and articulate her research focus, which pivots around the social, political, and historical frameworks of diaspora, migration, global mobility, and exchange. Working predominately with paper, Evans is recognised for her site-specific installations that arise from an occupation with the interplay between ‘fine art’ and ‘craft’. Her cut-out silhouettes, in particular, build on the classical traditions of portraiture to challenge notions of representation, cultural change, and globalisation.

Evans studied at Goldsmiths, University College London, in London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has been a recipient of the Arts and Literary Arts Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, USA and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington D.C., USA. Recent exhibitions have taken place at the Southbank Centre in London, in 2014; Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, USA, in 2013; University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA, in 2013, and the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, USA, in 2008.