Emily Hesse (27 April 1980 - 4 November 2022) was a multidisciplinary British visual artist, author and activist.
When the exhibition organisers announced the sponsorship from BAE Systems Hesse worked with other artists to protest their unexpected sponsorship and following a vocal online campaign she, with her fellow campaigners, were successful in persuading the company to discontinue its support for the event.
[4][5] In 2018, Te Me No Press published Hesse's auto-biographical book, Black Birds Born from Invisible Stars,[6] which was commissioned by curator George Vasey for the exhibition 'The Everyday Political' at the Lake Gallery at Southwark Park Galleries in London.
[7] Later that year, Workplace Gallery in Gateshead hosted Hesse's solo exhibition 'The Taste of this History: a Church in my Mouth', which explored the challenges faced by female, working-class, artists such as herself.
[8][9] In 2022 as part of The Tetley Jerwood Commissioning Programme, Hesse created The Witches’ Institution (W.I.