Alison Knowles (New York 1933–2025) was an American artist and one of the leading figures of the Fluxus movement, an experimental avant-garde group founded in 1962. She worked across a wide range of media, including performance, sound art, installations, radio, printmaking, and artists’ books.
After briefly attending Middlebury College, she graduated with honors in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York. Her artistic development was influenced by painters Adolph Gottlieb and Josef Albers. Knowles was married to Fluxus artist and intermedia theorist Dick Higgins from 1960 to 1970 and again from 1984 until his death in 1998.
Throughout her career, Knowles created numerous innovative works, including her famous “Event Scores” – short instructional texts designed to be performed as artistic actions. She became especially well known for her performance Make a Salad, in which she prepared and served a giant salad to a live audience. In 2000, she also began creating musical instruments from handmade flax paper that produced sounds using beans.
Her work was exhibited internationally at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and exhibitions in Venice, Berlin, Geneva, Bern, and Zurich. She also taught at various art institutions, including serving as a guest professor at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany, and as an Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute in 2009.
Knowles is regarded as a pioneer of performance and sound art. Her work combined art with everyday activities and encouraged active audience participation, making a lasting contribution to the development of conceptual art, performance art, and intermedia practices.
On February 17, 1996, she appeared as a special guest at thealit, presenting The Black, Red and Green Banquet.
https://www.aknowles.com/