Danica I. J. Knežević

Danica I. J. Knežević is an artist, researcher, lecturer and carer, who creates performance, video, photography, and installations. Her work explores the everyday experience of caregiving, interpersonal encounters of the body, and queerness. Born on Darug Country in Sydney, Australia, and from the Slovenian-Croatian diaspora, she reflects on culture, grief, and identity in her practice. Knežević catalyses this cultural knowledge through her art, visualising care as reciprocal actions and finding a balance between failure, necessity, and aesthetics of interdependence.

Since 2014, she been a sessional lecturer at Australian Catholic University. In 2020, she was awarded her PhD from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, titled: Holding Space: The Negotiation of Self and Other in Performative Art Practice as a Site of Caregiving.

Professional highlights include: Labours of Love, Economies of Care in Contemporary Art at the Glucksman, Cork, 2025, Ireland."WHAT IT IS ABOUT YOU THAT CLOSES AND OPENS" at Anya & Andrew Shiva Gallery, New York (2024-25), and her international solo show Rhythms of Care/RITMI SKRBI, Obrat Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia, 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 aims 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.