Drawing from her training in theatre and the psychology of group dynamics, New York–based artist Autumn Knight makes performances that reshape perceptions of race, gender, and authority. She scrutinizes institutional spaces that regulate African American subjects or that assert their absence, often putting black women at the center of the conversation to usurp the dynamics of a room with humor and with purpose. Autumn Knight: In Rehearsal is the first comprehensive publication on the artist. It includes essays from performance studies scholars Jennifer Doyle and Sandra Ruiz, and curators Amy L. Powell and Ryan N. Dennis. A conversation between the artist and renowned choreographer Cynthia Oliver offers a frank discussion of their support networks while also showing the influence of contemporary dance in Knight’s practice. The book reproduces Knight’s original performance scores and research notes to present a physical document of her work with a beautiful balance of images and text. The book both documents Autumn Knight’s exhibition at Krannert Art Museum in Spring 2017 and establishes a set of critical frameworks through which to consider Knight’s work and all of the issues it addresses: race, gender, authority and their play in institutions presenting performance.
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Rehearsal view of El Diablo y Cristo Negro, with Autumn Knight and Chivas Michael. Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, January 25, 2017
“Performance artist Autumn Knight’s practice is drawn from her deep well of experience probing the complexities of the human psyche. Employing skills learned from her background in drama therapy, Knight interrogates the thorniest modern-day social issues—race, gender, class, power—in her performances, installations, and text-based work. The absurdity, humor, and sense of play in her art forces her viewers to confront their vulnerability in ways they do not typically anticipate.”
Roach Dance, with Autumn Knight. Project Row Houses, Houston, October 20, 2012
Here + Now
An experimental freezing of a room through metaphorical means, with Autumn Knight. Alabama Song, Houston, July 27, 2013
“How do we account for the unconscious properties of our flesh? That is, how do we negotiate the internal residue of race, gender, sexuality, and those power dynamics that mitigate difference in the space of any institution? What is being thought against our skin that isn’t being said? And if the only signifiers that matter are the ones not being directly expressed, who do we become in this space of aesthetics, with and against our own feelings, alienations, and unspoken biases?
Performance score for Autumn Knight: In Rehearsal, with S. Bianca Bailey. Krannert Art Museum, Champaign,February 23, 2017
“Autumn Knight confronts the institution as a specific kind of material. It is, in her work, a psychic and a physical structure. It is, in her work, exactly what it is in our lives. It is an idea, a set of mythologies, a culture. It has a reproduction system and a life. It is a force which moves through us.”
Book Conversations:
April 5, 2019
Autumn Knight, Amy L. Powell, and Sandra Ruiz
Krannert Art Museum
April 16, 2019
Ryan N. Dennis, Autumn Knight, and Amy L. Powell
Project Row Houses
May 23, 2019
Autumn Knight and Amy L. Powell
Independent Curators International
May 30, 2019
Autumn Knight, Amy L. Powell, and Nico Wheadon
The Studio Museum in Harlem at Gavin Brown’s enterprise