GuestRoomMaribor May 2024

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Constructing care

DANICA I. J. KNEŽEVIĆ

Danica I. J. Knežević (1986) is an artist, researcher, lecturer, and carer who creates performance art, video, photography and installation. Her work explores interpersonal encounters, queerness and the exchange of care. Implicit in her work is Knežević's use of her body and the transference of communication that often comes into play between audience and performer. She was born in Australia and is from the Slovenian-Croatian diaspora. Knežević holds a PhD from The University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts. She resides and works in Sydney, Australia, as an artist and university lecturer. She has exhibited in many exhibitions, and is a recipient of multiple awards and prizes.
https://www.dijk.com.au

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Danica Knežević

RYTHMS OF CARE

6. 6. - 2. 8. 2024
Curator Teri Szűcs
Exhibition opening 6th of June, 7 pm, OBRAT - space for art and participation (Trg revolucije 9, Maribor)

Danica I. J. Knežević is an Australian artist and theorist of Croatian and Slovenian heritage. Knežević works in performance art, video and photography. Her performance videos and photographic works will be shown in her exhibition at the Obrat Gallery in Maribor, entitled Rhythms of Care, from June 6 to August 2, 2024.

Danica I. J. Knežević is also a carer. Through her artistic practice, she makes visible the experiences and circumstances of this complex work, role and position. Her point of departure is most often the bond of intimacy that builds up between the participants in the caring relationship. We rarely see into this dynamic connection that is so often tabooed and devalued; but Knežević invites us, the viewers, in, gently and often with a lot of humour. In the performances that accompany her exhibitions, she subtly initiates the viewer into processes that involve two bodies of equal importance: that of the caregiver and that of the cared-for.

The body of the caregiver is given special emphasis in Knežević's work – a body that performs essential work, but is rarely seen highlighted. In the oeuvre of Knežević, it is also a body that possesses the experience of queerness, penetrating gender boundaries through the caring relationship that rewrites normative hierarchies. The caregiver's body also holds the experience of diasporic identities – and caring for loved ones is often presented as translation, a constant mediation between languages and cultural systems. At the same time, Knežević is very much concerned with spaces where care takes place – our homes, rooms and hallways: how they are affected and rearranged by the presence of care work, how our bodies are present among them, how these bodies and walls become unapparent to the society around them, and finally, how art can still bring them to the fore.

Rhythmicity pervades Knežević's performative works, revealing the inherently repetitive nature of care work. But beyond this, the subtle alignment and interplay of bodies within the caring relationship is like a dance – choreographed and rich in detail. Add to this the context of diasporic identities and it can even be like a kolo, as in Knežević's video, Maintaining Rhythm. This delicately complex system of experiences, presented in the artistic space, appeals to several of our senses at once – as does caring.

The exhibition opens as part of GuestRoom Maribor's residency programme entitled Constructing Care. Danica I. J. Knežević is actively involved in the cooperation with the artists in residence. The title of the residency programme is taken from one of the photographic works in the exhibition Rhythms of Care. Care is not a "given", but a political, social, historical construction, a structure based on economic and gender relations. It is also the result of the joint constructive effort of two people – the cared for and the carer. Danica I. J. Knežević's exhibition calls us to enter this often invisibilised, yet omnipresent structure of our everyday lives, to experience it through works that are ruthlessly precise, but also invite us to experience the intimate gentleness of caring.

Artist talk and discussion with Teri Szűcs, curator: June 12, 18.00, Obrat gallery