Zanny Begg
I acknowledge the Wadi Wadi people of the Five Islands Dreaming as the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, and I pay respect to their Elders past and present. This is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
Zanny Begg is a video installation artist who works across drawing, film, social and spatial practice to explore questions of feminism, migration, and ecological and intergenerational responsibility. Often creating intricate worlds through drawing costumes and backdrops, Zanny is interested in the loops and twists of time that reveal previously submerged or hidden histories.
Zanny’s new new commissions include Pakiboy², Campbeltown Arts Centre and Elise (and Minnie), UTS Art Gallery. Her recent exhibitions include Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, the 60th Venice Biennale, and the Sharjah, Taipei, Labin, Limerick, Odessa and Istanbul Biennales, THE NATIONAL 2017, NEW AUSTRALIAN ART, UTOPIA PULSE at the Secession, Vienna, STATECRAFT (AND BEYOND), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, MONA FOMA, Tasmania, SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2020, NOVA GALLERY, Zagreb and OK VIDEO FESTIVAl, Jakarta. She is part of two national tours These Stories will be Different (M&GNSW) and Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection (ACMI). She recently completed two public art commissions with Orange Regional Gallery and Deakin University, Melbourne.
Zanny was awarded the 2023 Create Australia Visual Arts Fellowship and the 2024 VAC Commissioning Grant. She is the winner of the 66th Blake Prize Established Artist Residency 2021, the 2018 winner of the inaugural ACMI and Artbank film commission, the 2016 winner of the Incinerator Art Award, Art for Social Change, the 2016 winner of the Terrence and Lynnette Fern Cite Residency Paris; and was chosen by Werner Herzog to attend his Rogue Film School, in Munich, 2015. She has been awarded residencies in Barcelona (Australia Council for the Arts); Paris (Terrence and Lynnette Fern Cite Residency); Yogyakarta (Asia Link Residency); Chicago (Australia Council for the Arts); and Hong Kong (Australia-China Council).
She is the Director of Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, and has an established career as a curator. She has been a guest speaker at multiple conferences and workshops including Civic Actions: Artists’ Practices Beyond the Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Artist as Activist, Art as Catalyst, Hong Kong Art Fair, Between Production and Facts: The Reinvention of Artistic Activism, MACBA, Barcelona and New Social Subjects, Cambridge University, the UK.
Her recent film works include; Elsie (and Minnie) (2025), Pakiboy2 (2025), Juanita Nielsen NOW (2022), Magic Mountains (2020), Stories of Kannagi (2020); The Beehive (2018); The City of Ladies (with Elise McLeod); The Bullwhip Effect (2017); How to Blow up a Bubble that Won’t Burst; 1001 Nights in Fairfield (2015); and Doing Time (2014).
Contact: zanny.b[at]gmail.com