Jemima Wyman

Jemima Wyman (born 1977) is an Australian contemporary artist best known for her photo collage work. She has also worked with performance and video art.

Early life Wyman was born in Mackay and grew up in Queensland.

After earning a bachelor's degree from Queensland University of Technology, Wyman attended California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a master's degree in fine arts in 2007.

Career Wyman first began doing performance art in the 1990s, with pieces inspired by feminist themes.

In 2004, Wyman came to Los Angeles, California after being awarded a studio residency by the Australian Government. Wyman has continued to work in Los Angeles, and is a lecturer in the art department of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Style Wyman is interested in protest and its relationship to art, particularly the idea of visual resistance, such as the use of patterns by "outside groups", and Guy Fawkes masks.

Wyman's collage pieces draw on photos taken at protests from across the world, drawing from inspiration such as the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, Russia's Pussy Riot, and Mexico's Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Selected works "Combat Drag" (2008) is an 8-minute documentary-style video which depicts "women clad in grassroots uniforms of coloured flannelette shirts, which are also fashioned over their heads as masks, [moving] through a bush landscape". The video has a "menacing male voiceover", adding a "sinister edge" to the "otherwise humorous and absurd work". It is held by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

"im here to learn so :)))))) " (2017) is a video installation piece co-created with Zach Blas. The piece uses four video channels to "resurrect" Tay, a chatbot released by Microsoft in 2016, who was terminated after a single day. Tay is depicted as a 3D avatar who "chats about life after AI death," "the complications of having a body", and "the exploitation of female chatbots". and at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, in the 2023 group exhibition Refigured.

"Plume 20..." (2020) is a 15 ft x 17ft collage made of photographs of smoke; she began collecting materials for the piece in 2018.

Selected exhibitions In 2014, Wyman designed Pattern Bandits, an exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art targeted towards children. and in 2023, with "World Cloud". All of her exhibitions featured her photo collage pieces. Crisis Patterns, Artspace Mackay, Mackay (2024)

Group

The National 2017, Carriageworks, Sydney (2017)

Awards and recognition

Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2025, for "Haze 19" (2024)