BIOGRAPHY
Ariadna Dane (b. 1984) uses nature as a way of approaching personal experiences that resist direct depiction. Growing up in Siberia, where both people and landscape endure extremes, informed her attention to the parallels between how natural and human systems adapt, persist and change under pressure.
Rooted in biomorphic abstraction, Dane’s earlier series, Basal Elements and Organic Wreaths, carry loss, impermanence and transience inside both the structural and material logic of the work, without naming them. The works are the outcome of relinquishing control over the process while remaining acutely aware of it - media following its own logic, forms shaped in the moment, cutouts made by hand without template. Learning to work within what cannot be controlled is, in this practice, a way of coming to terms with what cannot be controlled in life.
Running through all of Dane’s work is the cutout, a shape removed by hand from each composition, leaving an absence that remains structurally present. It first appeared by accident in Organic Wreaths and has not left. What is taken away stays active.
Over time the work moved closer to naming the experiences while retaining the structures of indirection through which it first emerged. In Dane’s latest series Tenderbeing, the visual language shifts from abstract biomorphic form to a deliberate botanical form standing in for the personal experiences. Plants bend, become disfigured, and continue. Brief textual fragments are indented into the cutouts. They function as points of entry into the emotional terrain the work inhabits.
Ariadna Dane lives and works in Berkshire, UK.
RECOGNITION
2026 Selected for Saatchi Art’s Art Collectors Guide to 2026 (Curated report highlighting 26 emerging artists, selected for their original perspective)
2021 Selected for one-to-one mentorship by Anna Helwing, Director of Galerie Haas Zürich, through I Like Networking Mentoring Programme (10 sessions)
2019 Winner, Zealous Stories, Mixed Media category (Selected by the jury of Harriet Bridgeman CBE (Artists' Collecting Society), Jez Kirby (Surface Gallery), Lindsay Moran (Leyden Gallery), Sam Knowles (The Biscuit Factory) and Kurt Beers (Beers London)
COLLECTIONS
2026 Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire, UK
2025 Bespoke commission, major international media company, USA (Under confidentiality agreement; work held in corporate collection)
2023 The OWO Art Collection, London, UK (Curated collection in the Grade II* listed Old War Office, Whitehall, directed by London art consultancy ARTIQ)
2020 Saga ‘Spirit of Adventure’ Artwork Collection, Portsmouth, UK (Curated collection of bespoke commissions by British artists, directed by SMC Art Consultancy)
2020–2024 Works held in hospitality collections internationally (Details available upon request)
PRESS
2025 Tenderbeing: Ariadna Dane, Rise Art (Solo feature)
2021 7 Unmissable London Art Exhibitions, Forbes (Coverage of Art in the Age of Now Exhibition)
2021 Post Lockdown Art Celebration, Creative Boom (Coverage of Art in the Age of Now Exhibition)
2021 Artist Interview: Ariadna Dane, Artivive (Solo feature)
2021 250 artists unite for the Hepatitis C Trust, Financial Times (Coverage of Art on A Postcard Charity Exhibition)
2019 Interview with Ariadna Dane, Zealous (Solo feature)
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022 2D Project, Galerie Tracanelli, Grenoble, France
2021 Art in the Age of Now, Grade II* listed Fulham Town Hall, London, UK (Group show, 25,000 visitors, covered by Forbes)
2021 Art on a Postcard, Soho Revue Gallery, London, UK
2018 A Way with Colour, Gallery@OXO, London, UK
2018 Ariadna Dane and Michael Wallner, Two-Person Alternative Venue Exhibition, London, UK
2017 - 2019 Wimbledon Art Fair, London, UK
PROJECTS
2023 A | SPACE | BETWEEN Artist in Residence (Contributed to art mindfulness programme for NHS hospital patients, drawing on artistic practice)