Aistit / coming to our senses

b. 1996 in The Bahamas,

based in Chicago, IL

Knowles’ work invites through the archetypal & moves beyond as an incredibly specific expression of interspecies companionship. At once a seemingly private language, its monumental character reveals that the work is generated from primordial knowledge.

They garner strength from the formless, fluid movement of unbounded rhythm.

His poetics are epic in scale, with an intimate cadence that ebbs & flows in sub-realities. There’s a symbiosis of confessional narrative & emotional lyric, acting as a soft ground for a central figure of luminously erotic queer desire.

Romantic longing nourishes an empathic absorption into a space pulsating with aliveness. The aesthetics consistent resonance of humane & animal grief is redemptive. Through alchemy, there’s hope for rebirth as its ochre atmosphere breathes prenatal warmth & a givenness for meditations on ancient sentience.

This open & untethered vision of inter-being is more than a pollyannish dream of a beautiful ecology. The stakes of this cosmology are deep within solemn contemplation of what is nature, how does one maintain another’s quality of life & what capacity of being death doula allows for a way to die with dignity & grace.

Knowles received his MFA in Painting as a New Artist Society Award scholar in 2020 from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions include Galerie Emanuel Layr (Vienna, Austria), Andrew Kreps (New York, NY), Vdrome (Milan, IT), Four Flags at Chicago Manuel Style (Chicago, IL), Soccer Club Club (Chicago, IL), The Green Gallery East (Milwaukee, WI), The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (Nassau, Bahamas) & Popop Studios (Nassau, Bahamas).