Autumn Knight, video still from Complain/Disappoint, 2023.
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With the second iteration of party pooper, Knight forgoes the scripted text of her previous performance and responds to the elements of the exhibition, the immediate environment, and the intricacies of the theme of complaint. The primary medium of the performance is Knight's own voice and movement within the gallery space as she explores the dynamics of group complaint.
Drawing on her background in theatre and the psychology of group dynamics, Knight is in her element with improvisation, which lends itself to absurdity, humour and play. She employs these as critical tools with which to confront the difficult topics that complaint touches upon: inequity, authority, social and cultural dynamics, and conventional assumptions around race and gender. She is interested in interrogating how complaint asks who gets taken seriously, and where and when. Knight also revels in the joys of complaint: the release of burden, the satisfaction – sometimes power – of putting something into words, the camaraderie of complaint.
The exhibition and these related performances consider how complaint reveals negotiations of power in everyday life. Rather than dismissing complaint as a nuisance, Knight takes seriously the act of complaining: its pleasures, its frustrations, and its political potential.
About the artist
Autumn Knight is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist who works with performance, installation, video, and text. Drawing from her training in theatre and the psychology of group dynamics, Knight makes performances that reshape perceptions of race, gender, and authority.
Knight’s performance works have been presented by major museums, galleries, and performance venues including Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2025); Shedhalle, Zürich (2025); Performance Space New York, New York (2023); Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA Chicago), 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); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Portland (2024, 2018); Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2018); and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2017), among many others. Knight’s work WALL (2014–16) is the first live performance work to enter 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, New York (2023); and In Rehearsal at Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois (2017).
Knight is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, honours, and fellowships, including the Artadia Award, Art Matters Grant, Rema Hort Mann Grant, Anonymous Was A Woman Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize in Visual Art, Guggenheim Fellowship, and most recently, the Trellis Art Fund Grant. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2016) and holds a B.A. in Theater Arts from Dillard University and an M.A. in Drama Therapy from New York University.
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Thu, 15 Oct 2026
Lower Gallery
07:00 pm
Thursday 15 October, 7pm
Seating will be available on benches and chairs.
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Lower Gallery
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Autumn Knight, Nothing: more, 2026, performed at The Chocolate Factory Theatre, New York. Photo: Maria Baranova-Suzuki.
