AUTUMN KNIGHT

Knight’s interdisciplinary practice draws on theatre, psychology, improvisation and social exchange. Her exhibition at the ICA presents a new installation and performance work about the act of complaining: its pleasures, its frustrations, and its political potential. At a moment when questions of voice, authority, and participation are increasingly contested, I Can’t Complain opens a dialogue with audiences about how power is negotiated in everyday life, asking not how we can stop complaining, but what complaints make visible.

Across an audio and spatial installation and a selection of recent video works, Autumn Knight transforms the Lower Galleries into a space where complaint is given sustained attention. Characteristic of her practice, these works embrace humour, discomfort, and intimacy. The main gallery is dominated by a canopy of balloons, which are a recurring motif in the artist’s work, alongside architectural elements that frame a sound installation. For the latter, Knight recorded conversations with participants about their everyday irritations and grievances, revealing how seemingly minor dissatisfactions can expose larger social and systemic failings.

Knight studied drama therapy and theatre arts before pursuing performance practices within a contemporary art context. Her work often begins with a prompt or proposal that allows space for conflict and exchange. The video works in the back gallery present earlier iterations of her investigations into complaint that involved objects, collaboration with participants, and the prompt to share their annoyances. For I Can’t Complain, Knight extends this logic into new performance work that will punctuate the gallery space on dates throughout the exhibition’s run.

Solo performances by Knight will take place on 1, 12 and 15 October, alongside performances during November in collaboration with London-based artist Samra Mayanja, and the Brussels-based artistic duo Michelangelo Miccolis and nick von kleist.

Autumn Knight is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist who works with performance, installation, video, and text. Drawing on her training in theatre and the psychology of group dynamics, Knight makes performances that reshape perceptions of race, gender, and authority.

Knight’s performance work has been presented in museums, galleries, and performance venues including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2025); Shedhalle, Zürich (2025); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland (2024, 2018); Performance Space New York (2023); Museum Ostwall, Dortmund (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA Chicago)(2022); Western Front, Vancouver (2021); The Kitchen, New York (2020); Performa, New York (2019); the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019); Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2018); and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2017), among others. Knight’s work WALL (2014–16) was the first live performance work acquired for the permanent collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Knight’s solo exhibitions include Nothing #26: The Potential of Nothing Is Everything at Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York (2023), and In Rehearsal at Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois (2017).

Knight is the recipient of awards, grants, and fellowships, including the Houston Artadia Award, Art Matters Grant, Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize in Visual Art, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2024, she received a Trellis Art Fund Milestone Grant. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2016) and holds a BA in Theater Arts from Dillard University and an MA in Drama Therapy from New York University.