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 care exchange through 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 must give care. The carer is an invisible body, a witnessing body. These performances are actions that examine the 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 Gluckman, Ireland. Curated by Katie O’Grady and Fiona Kearney the exhibition titled, Labour of Love: Economies of care in contemporary art was on from 28 March - 6 July 2025.

From 21 November 2024 - 20 Feb 2025, her works Not the Mama, 2019 and It’s Hard to Keep Your Head Above the Coffee Table, 2014 are showing in WHAT IT IS ABOUT YOU THAT CLOSES AND OPENS, 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 issues of the global care crisis from a local perspective.

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

Selected shows of importance: In 2024, the group shows 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. Making Meaning: Art as acts of care. 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 final projects. She has received teaching awards for her teaching.