About Danica

Dr Danica I. J. Knežević is an artist, carer, researcher, and lecturer working across performance, video, photography, and installation. Her internationally exhibited practice investigates caregiving as performance, endurance, and embodied labour, examining the emotional, physical, and political dimensions of care.

Grounded in the belief that care is a mutual exchange, Knežević's work explores the shifting relationship between caregiver and receiver through performance, installation, video, and photography. Positioning caregiving as performance, endurance, and embodied labour, her practice examines the body as both witness and participant, reflecting on anticipatory grief, familial relationships, migration, cultural heritage, memory, and belonging.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Labour of Love: Economies of Care in Contemporary Art, at the Glucksman, Cork, Ireland (2025), and WHAT IT IS ABOUT YOU THAT CLOSES AND OPENS (2024-2025), curated by Macushla Robinson at the Anya & Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York, which featured her works Not the Mama (2019) and It's Hard to Keep Your Head Above the Coffee Table (2014). In 2025, she premiered Life's a Waiting Room at McGlade Gallery, Sydney, a new installation examining waiting rooms as spaces shaped by care, uncertainty, and anticipation. An accompanying essay, "As a carer, I’ve spent hours in waiting rooms. My new artwork explores these liminal spaces." was published in The Conversation.

Her solo exhibition Rhythms of Care/RITMI SKRBI at Obrat Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia (2024), expanded her ongoing investigation into care, labour, and relationality. During the residency, she developed Constructing Care, a research-based project addressing the global care crisis through local perspectives while mentoring emerging artists from across Europe.

Her experimental short film Body Says, No was nominated for Best Animation Short Film at the St Kilda Film Festival. In 2023, she was awarded the Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Emerging Scholarship and presented the solo exhibition Body Says, No at Firstdraft, Sydney.

Other selected exhibitions include Partial Visions (2024), curated by Ren Gregorčič; The Family at LoosenArt Gallery, Rome (2023); Enacting Dreams / Always Knitting in the Incinerator Art Award, Melbourne (2022); Visualising Care Series: Women and Work at Duke University (2021); Rewriting: the Politics of Care at Bus Projects (2021), curated by Macushla Robinson; Caregiving, Making Meaning: Art as acts of Care at the University of Technology Sydney (2020); and Critical Bodies at Verge Gallery (2018), curated by Julie Rrap and Cherine Fahd.

Knežević holds a PhD from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. Her doctoral research, Holding Space: The Negotiation of Self and Other in Performative Art Practice as a Site of Caregiving (2020), examined performance as a relational space of care. Alongside her artistic practice, she has taught performance, video, and photography since 2014 at Australian Catholic University and the University of Technology Sydney, receiving recognition for her contribution to higher education.