Anya Liftig

Anya Liftig (born 1977) is an American performance artist and memoirist.

Early life
Liftig was born in 1977 in Norwalk, Connecticut. Her parents were both public school teachers, although her father was from an upper-middle-class Jewish family and her mother was from Appalachian Kentucky. She cites her annual tradition of spending her school years in Westport and her summers with her extended family in East Kentucky as influences on her artwork.

After graduating from Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, Liftig enrolled at Yale University. While there, she was a member of the literary fraternity St. Anthony Hall. A member of Morse College, she graduated with a degree in English.

While a full fellowship student at Georgia State University, Liftig’s work shifted from photography to performance pieces. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Georgia State University in 2004. Liftig’s thesis, self-evidence, was the first live performance art thesis exhibited at GSU.

Visual and performance art
Before transitioning to performance art, Liftig's early photography work was documented in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Public Culture. Since returning to the New York area in 2005, Liftig has curated and performed at the TATE Modern, MoMA, Center for Performance Research, Panoply Performance Lab, Highways Performance Space, Lapsody4 Finland, FADO Performance Art Centre in Toronto, Performance Art Institute San Francisco, Queens Museum, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Rose Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Grace Exhibition Space, Movement Research at Judson Church, The Kitchen at the Independent Art Fair, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, Performance Space London, Month of Performance Art Berlin, OVADA-Oxford, Joyce Soho, and other venues around the world.

After obtaining her MFA from Georgia State University, Liftig exhibited work responding to the history of the South and Atlanta specifically. I’m a Groucho Marxist, exhibited in July 2012, featured Liftig attempting to climb a 25 ft high barricade of reclaimed material covered in peanut butter for three hours, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind her back. She stated, “I want my audience to experience the barricade by seeing me go through it,” referring to both internal struggle and political tensions.

In 2010, Liftig responded to artist Marina Abramović’s performance, The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) with her own work titled The Anxiety of Influence. This was intended as an intervention of Abramović’s work, which had the artist sitting silently at a table in the MoMA’s lobby across from audience members. Here, Liftig dressed as a doppelgänger of Abramović and remained silently seated across from the artist all day, preventing other audience members from engaging with Abramović.

Writing
Active since 2001, Liftig’s written work includes both long and short pieces. Her written pieces have been extensively published in chapbooks and literary journals such as Now and Then, The Other Journal, Hippocampus, Kindred, and The Chattahoochee Review. Her first book, a memoir entitled Holler Rat, will be published by Abrams in August 2023. The book focuses on how Liftig’s upbringing in Appalachian Kentucky and upper-middle-class Connecticut influenced her lifelong path to self-discovery and development as a performing artist.

Recognition
Liftig’s visual work has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times Magazine, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue Italia. She has received a Mertz Gilmore Award, the Adrian Van Sinderan Award, and the Franklin Furnace Award. She has had fellowships and residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Casa Tres Patios, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo.

Exhibitions and performances
Liftig’s participation in contemporary art is primarily in the form of avant-garde performances and dance exhibited live and as recorded video media.