About

I am Dani Admiss, an artist, curator and interdisciplinary researcher based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

I've long been fascinated by the stories society tells about who we are and how the world works, and the many other stories, knowledges and ways of being that exist alongside them. For instance, how stories-from-above often differ from people's lived experiences, knowledge and ways of being. My work explores how people understand, inhabit and shape their worlds, and how different ways of knowing, imagining and relating might open possibilities for living differently.

My artistic and curatorial practice grows from a belief that the ways we come to know the world shape how we live within it. For me, curating is not simply about the objects other people make, but the relationships we can build together. Over the past decade, I have worked with artists, scientists, technologists, activists, growers, caregivers and communities to create shared spaces for collective enquiry, story building and meaning making. These have taken the form of exhibitions, experimental institutions, artistic research, collaborative learning programmes and public interventions.

Together, we have created immersive games exploring digital labour and data extraction, drafted a Bill of More-Than-Human Rights, established an alternative conservation ethics committee, traced histories of industrial pollution and developed a living decarbonisation roadmap for art workers. Each project is an experiment in bringing different forms of knowledge and experience into conversation, making unfamiliar relationships perceptible and finding ways through complex and uncertain conditions.

Much of my work has been concerned with learning to live well with others within ecological limits. Through Sunlight Doesn't Need a Pipeline (2022), Tending Waste, Cultivating Life (2024-5) and Making Home (2024), I have explored the everyday practices of care, adaptation, solidarity and collective learning through which people sustain and remake their worlds. I am particularly interested in what happens when situated knowledge meets the often abstract languages of science, policy and institutional expertise, and how artistic practice might create pathways between them without requiring their differences to disappear.

More recently, my research has turned towards the material lives of climate transition. Climate futures do not remain in the future. They are already taking shape through energy systems, carbon stores, landscapes, infrastructures and the relationships these bring into being. Through Carbon Afterlives (2026) and The Earth Keeps Dreaming Us (2026), I am interested in following these transformations as they unfold: what they make possible, what they carry forward, and how people might come to perceive, negotiate and care for the worlds being assembled around them.

Across my practice, I think of artistic research as a form of collective wayfinding. It is a way of moving through uncertainty, noticing the things we can see as much as those we cannot, and bringing different experiences, histories and forms of knowledge into relation. Rather than arriving at a single account of the world, I am interested in creating the conditions through which other understandings, relationships and possibilities might emerge.

I hold an AHRC-funded PhD in Curatorial Practice and World-Making from the University of Sunderland and an MSc in Climate Change Management from the University of Edinburgh. I was a Stanley Picker Fellow at Kingston University and an Artangel Making Time resident. My work has been developed and presented internationally with organisations including Furtherfield, transmediale, Arts Catalyst and Artangel. I serve on the editorial advisory board of Emerald's Digital Materialities and Sustainable Futures book series.

Short Bio

Dr Dani Admiss is an Edinburgh-based artist, curator and interdisciplinary researcher whose work explores how people understand, inhabit and shape their worlds. Working across art, science, technology and climate justice, she creates exhibitions, experimental institutions and collaborative learning projects that bring different forms of knowledge and experience into conversation.

Her practice approaches curating as a form of collective wayfinding, creating spaces for shared enquiry, storytelling and experimentation. Her recent research explores the material worlds of climate transition, tracing how imagined futures take shape through infrastructures, landscapes and everyday life, and how artistic practice might help people perceive, negotiate and care for the relationships they bring into being.

Short Biography

Dr Dani Admiss is an Edinburgh-based artist, curator and interdisciplinary researcher working across artistic research, climate justice and critical design. Her practice explores how people understand, inhabit and shape their worlds, bringing different forms of knowledge and experience into conversation through exhibitions, experimental institutions and collaborative research. Her work moves between everyday practices of care and collective learning and the larger infrastructures, technologies and imaginaries shaping climate futures. She holds an AHRC-funded PhD in Curatorial Practice and World-Making and an MSc in Climate Change Management, and was a Stanley Picker Fellow and Artangel Making Time resident.