Khalil McKnight (b. 2005) is an artist born in New Orleans, LA. He currently lives and works in Providence, RI, where he is pursuing a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. His work examines memory, history, and visibility, creating psychological narratives that mirror an intricate reality. 

McKnight's practice is grounded in the act of looking. He trusts the potential for image to manipulate reality. McKnight considers how image can also possess contradictions, analyzing both the seen and unseen, the narratives hidden from us and even those we choose to hide from ourselves. Combining historical and cultural narratives with personal memory, his compositions challenge modes of looking and reconstitute the Black figure in history. By mimicking his likeness across two and three-dimensional forms, McKnight maintains power of his own image production. He deliberately ages, duplicates, and transforms to develop an uncanny world that does not replicate reality, and rather recasts it. 

Khalil is the recipient of the RISD Museum Dorner Prize (2026), ARTIT Portrait Artist of the Year (2024), and YoungArts U.S. Presidential Scholar of the Arts (2023). He attended the Chautauqua Visual Arts - School of Art Six Week Residency in 2025, and was a co-curator of the RISD Black Biennial in 2026.