Dani Surname is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. Hailing from the North East, Surname uprooted to study at Queen Mary, University of London. She went in with dreams of becoming an actor, and emerged, still sticky from cream and washing up liquid, as a performance artist.

Colour and material obsessed, Surname works primarily with discomfort, personalised endurance and persona. Treating her psyche and personal experience as material, Surname makes art interrogating the contradictions, in-between states and messiness of her identity. 

She’s yet to meet a trauma that can’t be alchemised into art.

Surname will begin an MA in Contemporary Photography at Central St. Martin’s this September, to continue exploring photography as a core methodology of her practice.

Pose outtake from Glucose Finger Painting, Dani Surname, 2019.