Ayanah Moor (born 1973, Norfolk, Virginia, United States) is a conceptual artist working in print, video, mixed media, and performance. Her work addresses contemporary popular culture by interrogating identity and vernacular aesthetics. Much of her works center on hip-hop culture, American politics, black vernacular and gender performance.
Moor received an MFA in printmaking from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 1998 and a BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia in 1995.
Moor is presently an Associate Professor in the Department of Printmedia, at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Her prior appointment was at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
Moor has described her work as examining how popular culture reflects social identities and power structures. She has noted that she aims to appropriate and revise existing material to invert and expand meaning.
She exhibited her work alongside Krista Franklin at the Produce Mode Gallery in Chicago in 2017, in a show entitled Quiet Storm. In 2015, Moor's collaboration with Jasmine Hearn was included in Flow at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Flow was the fourth in the F-Series exhibitions at the Studio Museum. The piece is a performance artwork that translates drawing into sound and sound into movement. Flow is a response to the 1982 collaboration of Bill T. Jones and Keith Haring, Long Distance. Thanks For The Race [2014]: Thanks For The Race (with various participants), performance work incorporating wood, mats, rocks; ACRE Residency, Steuben, WI Queer & Brown in Steeltown [2013-12]: (collaboration with Raquel Rodriguez) podcast & blog project The Pittsburgh Passion Project, Independent Women's Football League [2009]: Pittsburgh, PA Still [2006]: "Still" is a series of photographs that address how women are represented in contemporary rap music videos
In 2015, Moor received a Hyde Park Art Center Jackman Goldwasser Residency, Chicago, IL. In 2014, she received The Pittsburgh Foundation, Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Award ($7,500). In 2011, she was awarded a STUDIO for Creative Inquiry fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2011, The Pittsburgh Foundation awarded Moor an Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Award. In 2003, she received a Mid Atlantic Arts FoundationâÂÂCreative Fellowship Award and The Pittsburgh Foundation, Artist Award, Pittsburgh, PA. In 2002, Moor was awarded a Berkman Faculty Development Fund Grant, Carnegie Mellon University.
Moor released works the following collections: Soho House Art Collection, 76 Dean Street, London, UK, Milton and Nancy Washington, Pittsburgh, PA, Proyecto âÂÂace, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Agency of Unrealized Projects, e-flux and Serpentine Gallery, London, UK, Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA, The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Baltimore, MD, Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA, David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, PA, Foreland Street Studio Archives, Pittsburgh, PA, EGRESS Press and Research Archives, Edinboro, PA, Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain Lake, NY Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA