about

Dawn Felicia Knox is a multimedia artist working to create interventions and multi-layered installations that explore toxicity, remediation and transformation. She often works in collaboration with scientists, community members and fellow artists to collectively learn from the dynamic ecosystems we all inhabit.

In 2022 She was commissioned by BALTIC to create an installation for the Hinterlands exhibition. Her work The Felling explored deep time, pollution and the way self-seeding plants remediate the post industrial landscape. This was investigated through one plot of land in Felling Gateshead which was a swamp during the carboniferous period, a working mine during the industrial revolution and is now a contaminated brownfield site. Dawn was able to study ferns found on the site 320 million years apart; some trapped in coal seam fossils and others on the site now working to undo the contamination still left by the extraction of coal. Through a further ACE grant, Dawn is working in Ascus Laboratory in Edinburgh researching the way plants and fungi work together to undo the toxic residue of industrialisation.

Dawn has created many interdisciplinary projects and received numerous commissions resulting in installations, films and exhibitions across the UK and internationally. She worked with English Heritage to create Working the Stasis, which resulted in three interlinking exhibitions along Hadrian’s Wall that explored the tension between objects and the biological processes that work to degrade them.

As a curator she has worked with internationally renowned organisations including the Amber Collective in dialogue with artists and community activists to facilitate wider conversations about ethics, representation and collectivism.

Dawn can be contacted at dawn@dawnfelicia.com.