If awarded the £10,000 Dover Prize, I would use the funding to develop a new live performance project that explores East Asian queer identity, diasporic experience, and emotional suppression through sound, movement, and visual staging. This work continues my current practice, while marking a significant new step in integrating theatrical narrative and dramaturgy into my multimedia performances.
The funding will support:
– Fees for collaborators such as performers, lighting, costume, and stage designers
– Equipment and software for sound production
– Studio rental for rehearsals and development
– Technical support and venue hire for public sharing
– Travel and research costs during development
The final outcome will be a live performance that blends fragmented dialogue, abstract soundscapes, and physical movement to reflect the experience of being unheard or misunderstood within family and society. The performance space represents the protagonist’s internal world—rich in emotion yet dominated by external voices. Through sound manipulation, I express my own reaction to this inherited silence.
This is my first attempt to systematically combine staging, lighting, sound, and collaborative character dynamics, moving towards a dramaturgically structured performance where sound is not merely a backdrop but a core narrative force. This shift marks a crucial breakthrough in my creative development, allowing me to build a more mature, interdisciplinary language.
The Dover Prize would enable me to assemble a collaborative team and experiment with forms and visual structures I previously lacked the resources to explore. It would also lay the foundation for a potential touring version in the future.
The project centres on marginalised voices and questions dominant narratives around power, visibility, and identity. Can art turn silence into a political gesture? That is the provocation I want audiences to carry with them.
My work explores themes of marginalised voices, particularly from East and Southeast Asian queer perspectives. By presenting a performance-based project in Darlington, I hope to bring a different narrative into the local arts landscape—one that centres on those who often feel unheard or unseen.
This performance will experiment with sound, movement, and staging to evoke the experience of being silenced, creating a shared emotional space that invites empathy and reflection. Though not structured as a workshop, the work is intended to connect with audiences deeply and personally, encouraging those from outside the mainstream—young people, diasporic communities, or queer individuals—to recognise the value of their own stories.
By sharing a practice rooted in experimentation and identity politics, I hope to both contribute to the diversity of artistic voices in the region and inspire others to see creative expression as a way to claim space. I believe this can foster a stronger, more inclusive creative culture in Darlington—one where emerging artists feel empowered to speak, perform, and create from the margins.
My practice moves across sound, moving image, and live performance, often rooted in themes of queer identity, displacement, and emotional silence. I draw from personal memory, East Asian cultural fragments, and field recordings to build immersive experiences that challenge linear narratives and dominant representations. In recent years, I have become increasingly interested in sound as a medium for expressing the unspeakable, especially emotions and identities that exist outside of mainstream structures. In 2024, I participated in a moving image workshop hosted by Queer China UK, where I created The Leaved, The Left, a short film exploring queer and diasporic identity. I composed the soundtrack using field recordings from my travels and melodies made in GarageBand. The film was selected for the 2025 Queer East Festival. This led to my further exploration of sound-based storytelling. I taught myself DJing and began using voice sampling and mixing as a political and narrative tool. I developed a 5-minute hybrid performance for Kakilang’s Scratch Night, where I layered recordings of East Asian parents’ voices with my own production in a live dual-deck mix. The piece was later invited to open Queer Britain’s ESEA Showcase in London. I’m currently developing a longer live performance project that integrates sound design, abstract dialogue, and physical movement. It investigates how one’s inner voice can be overwhelmed by external expectations, especially within familial and cultural frameworks. Sound becomes the method of resistance and reconstruction. While I come from a lens-based background, I’m now shifting into a more interdisciplinary space, collaborating with performers, lighting designers, and scenographers to explore stage-based narrative structures. My goal is to create emotionally charged, politically resonant works that speak from the margins—not only about being unheard but about reclaiming the right to speak.
Yes, I hold a Master’s degree in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London (2021–2022). During the course, I focused on experimental conceptual art and event-based work, often incorporating institutional critique. My MA show marked a turning point where I began to explore a more introspective and emotionally driven approach. The final work was a performance centred around text, featuring an AI-generated voice delivering the narrative, while I interacted silently with a screen-based visual component I designed. This piece became my closest experience to theatre so far, and sparked a strong desire to create more complex, multi-dimensional performances in the future.
Yes, my work has been featured and reviewed across several respected platforms. In December 2024, FAD Magazine published a review titled “Sonic Journeys: Jash’s Fluid Cartographies of Identity”, highlighting my use of sound and performance to explore queer diasporic identity through emotionally layered audio-visual narratives.（
https://fadmagazine.com/2024/12/04/sonic-journeys-jashs-fluid-cartographies-of-identity/）
Earlier, my photography was featured in ELLEMEN China (2020), showcasing my early lens-based explorations of gender and intimacy. In 2022, my work was also selected by LensCulture, a major platform for contemporary photography, as part of their curated image collections. These features have helped build visibility for my interdisciplinary practice.
Yes, I took part in Queer Britain’s community residency from September to November 2024. It supported LGBTQ+ artists to develop new work for the community, and I presented a small installation and a live performance during the ESEA Showcase as part of the residency.
Email: awesomejashart@gmail.com
Address: Flat 295, The Sessile, London, N17 9QN, GB
Local Authority: Haringey Council
