About Danica

Dr Danica I. J. Knežević is an artist, carer, researcher, and lecturer who creates performances, videos, photography, and installations. Her work explores the endurance of caregiving, care as a mutual exchange, interpersonal encounters, the psychology of being a carer, and queerness.

Knežević uses her body and the transference of communication that often comes into play between audience and performer. This mimics the interchangeability of the caregiver and receiver, which is a mutual exchange in her work. We all need care, and we all give care in some capacity. The carer is an invisible body, a witnessing body. These performances examine the endurance and psychology of this identity while meditating on anticipatory grief, familial relationships, and cultural heritage. She was born on Darug Country, Sydney, Australia, and is from the Slovenian-Croatian diaspora. This cultural context has taught her the meaning of performance, the body, physical labour, grief, place, and home.

In 2025, she showed her new body of work, Life’s a Waiting Room, at McGlade Gallery, Sydney. Read her article in The Conversation: "As a carer, I’ve spent hours in waiting rooms. My new artwork explores these liminal spaces."

Knežević’s photographic work, Being Home, showed at The Glucksman, Ireland. Curated by Katie O’Grady and Fiona Kearney, the exhibition was titled Labour of Love: Economies of Care in Contemporary Art, 28 March - 6 July 2025.

Her works Not the Mama (2019) and It’s Hard to Keep Your Head Above the Coffee Table (2014) were shown in WHAT IT IS ABOUT YOU THAT CLOSES AND OPENS (2024/2025), curated by Macushla Robinson at Anya & Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York.

Professional highlights include her international solo show Rhythms of Care/RITMI SKRBI, Obrat Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia, June - August 2024. During her time in Maribor, she mentored artists from Europe as part of their residency. Constructing Care was a research-based residency project that aimed to address the global care crisis from a local perspective.

Her experimental short film, Body Says, No, was nominated for Best Short Film Animation at the St Kilda Short Film Festival. In 2023, she was the recipient of the Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Emerging Scholarship, and that same year, she had a solo show at Firstdraft Gallery, Body Says, No.

Selected shows of importance include: In 2024, the group show Partial Visions, curated by Ren Gregorčič. In 2023, The Family, LoosenArt Gallery, Rome, Italy. In 2022, Enacting Dreams/Always Knitting was in the Incinerator Art Award, Incinerator Art Gallery, Melbourne. In 2021, Visualising Care Series: Women and Work, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, Duke University, and Rewriting: the Politics of Care, Bus Projects, curated by Macushla Robinson. In 2020, a solo show, Caregiving, Making Meaning: Art as acts of care, at the University of Technology Sydney. In 2018, Critical Bodies, Verge Gallery, Sydney, was curated by Julie Rrap and Cherine Fahd.

In 2020, Knežević received her PhD titled Holding Space: The Negotiation of Self and Other in Performative Art Practice as a Site of Caregiving from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney.

Since 2014, Knežević has been a sessional lecturer at the Australian Catholic University and University of Technology Sydney, where she has taught performance, video, and photography, core and elective subjects, and third-year projects. She has received teaching awards.