Emma Fitts is a contemporary New Zealand artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, photography, and textile installation. Based in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Fitts is known for creating immersive, materially rich environments that investigate architecture, textiles, queer histories, feminism, and memory. Her work combines abstraction with extensive research into overlooked cultural narratives, particularly those connected to women artists, domestic space, and modernist design. 

Fitts studied Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury before completing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Early in her career, she developed a distinctive approach to painting that emphasized surface, structure, and spatial relationships. Over time, her practice expanded into sculptural and textile-based installations that blur the boundaries between painting, object, and architecture. Using materials such as dyed canvas, wool, silk, rope, mesh, and suspended fabric forms, she creates works that encourage sensory and emotional engagement. 

Research and storytelling remain central to Fitts’ practice. Her projects frequently draw on feminist histories, queer archives, astronomy, architecture, and design, often reimagining the lives and contributions of underrepresented cultural figures. Through abstraction and material experimentation, she explores themes of intimacy, labour, domesticity, biography, and the emotional resonance of space. 

In 2018, Fitts undertook the prestigious McCahon House residency in Titirangi, Auckland, an important period of concentrated research and development that informed later exhibitions including In the Rough: Parts 1, 2 & 3 at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery. She has also completed the Olivia Spencer Bower Residency and the Fulbright-Wallace residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in California.

Fitts has exhibited widely throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. Significant solo exhibitions include From Pressure to Vibration: The Event of a Thread at The Dowse Art Museum, Lapping at Your Door at Objectspace Auckland, Touching Sight at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, and In the Rough: Parts 1, 2 & 3 at Te Uru Contemporary Gallery. 

Her work is held in important public and private collections throughout Aotearoa, including Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, The Dowse Art Museum, the University of Canterbury Art Collection, and the Chartwell Collection at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. 

Today, Emma Fitts is regarded as an important voice in contemporary New Zealand art, recognized for her innovative merging of painting, textiles, architecture, and feminist inquiry into immersive and deeply atmospheric installations.