Rthyms of Care / Ritmi Skrbi
Obrat Gallery, Maribor, Slovenia, 2024

Exhibition Text by Teri Szücs

Danica 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 6 June to 2 August 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 this dynamic connection that is so often tabooed and devalued, but Knežević invites us, the viewers, in, gently and often with a lot of humor. In the performances accompanying her exhibitions, she subtly initiates the viewer into processes involving two bodies of equal importance: the caregiver and 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: 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 forefront.

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 are 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 program, Constructing Care. Danica I. J.Knežević is actively involved as a mentor to the artists in residence. The residency program's title is taken from one of the photographic works in the exhibition Rhythms of Care.

Care is not a "given" but a political, social, and 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 Knežević's exhibition calls us to enter this often invisibilised yet omnipresent structure of our everyday lives, to experience it through ruthlessly precise works, and invite us to experience the intimate gentleness of caring.

Curator: Teri Szücs, Curators Consultant: Lucija Smodiš.
Exhibition Setup: Lucija Smodiš, Borut Wenzel, Teri Szücs, Danica I.J. Kneževic.
Text Translations: Maja Pan, Lucija Smodiš.
Proofreading: Maja Kovač, Tea Hvala.
Opening Night Performers of work I will follow, Just in case: Danica I.J. Kneževic, Eszter Káilay, Daria Khrystych, Martyna Miller.
Walker Donation: PROMTO d. o. o.
GuestRoomMaribor is supported by the Municipality of Maribor. Thect Constructing Care is supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the residency project European Union.