Wilma Cruise (b. 1945 Johannesburg, South Africa) is a South African sculptor and visual artist working with bronze and ceramic renderings of human and animal figures. Themes explored in Cruise’s work include the interface between humans and animals and existential conditions of muteness. She explores the conditions of communication between the human animal and other animals; a condition that transcends the spoken (human) word. Communication depends on semiotics, body language and prosody (tone of voice). She maintains it is not the animals who cannot speak (and therefore cannot reason), but us who cannot listen. If we do bother to listen, conditions of empathy are created between all animal kind, as she so often demonstrates in her baboon sculptures.

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Cruise has had over twenty-five solo exhibitions. Her work is represented in public, corporate and private collections. She has participated in the Havana Biennale, the Florence Biennale and the 7th Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Seoul, Korea. Cruise is a fellow of Ceramics South Africa and writes extensively in the field of ceramics.