If successful, I would use the Dover Prize bursary and two-year support to fully develop False Estate, a video game installation that explores dwelling as an embodied experience shaped by experiences of precarious living and diaspora. Drawing from personal and collective anecdotes, the project engages with the themes of displacement, memory, and home-making.
False Estate is currently being developed in Unity Game Engine and will run on a Raspberry Pi with a 7” screen, housed within a sculptural installation with custom-built controller for the audience to navigate in the virtual space. A preliminary version of the game will be presented at a one-day event at Somerset House this August, as part of Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Ourahmane The Pit project. Building on this, I will continue developing the project during an invited one-month residency at Zaratan AIR in Lisbon in 2026.
With the bursary, I plan to work with a video game sound designer experienced in Unity and FMOD to integrate a dynamic soundscape using interviews with family and friends, and a retelling of the Indian folktale Vikram Aur Betaal. I will also collaborate with electronics and robotics specialist Adam Green on designing the Raspberry Pi system and bespoke controller embedded within the sculpture.
This award will allow me to consolidate my ideas and bring False Estate to life as a fully functional and transportable installation.The funding will cover costs related to working with specialists, equipment, travel for this project in reaching more participants in development, and access to making spaces. It will also support my growth in cross-disciplinary collaboration and technical skills and enable me to share this work with wider audiences—from Somerset House audiences to Lisbon art communities, to Darlington locals who may resonate with its themes of movement, memory, and home.
Presenting False Estate in Darlington, following its development and showings at Somerset House and Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, would bring an internationally engaged, critically informed project to a local context.
The work will start conversations and cultivate creative engagement of the sense of belonging which contributes to broader engagement in contemporary art locally. As a diaspora-informed work, False Estate explores themes of movement, memory, and making-home—topics that may resonate with people in Darlington who have experienced migration or displacement.
I’m particularly excited to introduce a DIY approach to technology that empowers people to relate to technology as tools for community building rather than a distant or alienating system. Developing and presenting the project in accessible, interactive, and story-telling rooted way should encourage cross-disciplinary engagement in the arts in Darlington.
I am a London based Qingdao born artist who makes low-tech robots and mixed media installations through DIY-ing, casting, fictioning, and collecting. My practice attempts to make temporary bodies and worlds that localise and re-map the geographic distance embodied in diasporic queer experiences. Past exhibitions: On the Verge, Koppel Projects, London (2025)
HYPA-PHIX-D, Enclave Projects, London (2024)
Mobile Skin, Cone Shape Top, Oakland, CA (2024)
Queer East shedding:::selves, Ugly Duck Gallery, London (2024)
[solo-exhibition] Gxrilfwends!&:*>~<:, SET Byward Street, London (2024)
I am neither nor but a secret third thing, Yifan He and Kerolaina Linkevica. Backlit Gallery, Nottingham. (2023)
nodoCCS 8voFestival. RAISE Gallery. Caracas. (2022)
Per.Platform #3. Tomorrow Maybe Gallery. Hongkong. (2022)
Spur.world. D-Unit. Bristol. (2021)
When Was the Last Time You Saw the Sea?. Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo. (2021)
Arebyte selects SPUR.WORLD – Babe. Arebyte On Screen. Arebyte Gallery, London. (2021)
Model Village. Swiss Church in Covent Garden, London. (2020)
Do you have a degree in visual or applied arts at undergraduate and/or post-graduate level? Please provide details. (200 words)
I hold an M.A. in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2022), a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London, and was a selected cohort in the Labour and Art Graduate Summer School at the Yale School of Art, Yale Department of History of Art, and The Paul Mellon Centre.
I hold an M.A. in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2022), a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London, and was a selected cohort in the Labour and Art Graduate Summer School at the Yale School of Art, Yale Department of History of Art, and The Paul Mellon Centre.
I am the recipient of the Developing Your Creative Practice Fund by Arts Council England (2025). I was awarded the City of London x SET Studiomakers Prize for 2023–2024, which included a year-long studio residency in London. In 2019, I was shortlisted for the Social Art Award by the Institute for Art and Innovation e.V. in Berlin, Germany. I was named one of the Young Artists of the Year in the GAMMA Young Artist Competition: Global Landscape of Sustainable Art, hosted by ACCESS in Seoul, South Korea (2018).
Yes, in the capacity of invited guest curator I have received Arts Council England funding and delivered the following projects in collaboration with institutions and organisations: CAP’CHA, a multi-media exhibition centered on technology and trust at SET Lewisham, London (July–August 2024), and Swords and Kisses, an exhibition on world building in diaspora at Staffordshire St Gallery, London, and Der Vierte Raum, Hamburg (March 2023).
In 2021, I worked on Toolkits for Counterparts, part of the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme between the UK and the Philippines, and contributed to EU’s Digital Futures: Online Correspondences—a project on AI and inclusion led by Polis180 and the Goethe-Institut in Berlin. Previous commissions include Margate NOW 2020, in collaboration with People Dem Collective, and Social Works?: Live at Manchester Metropolitan University (2019).
In 2021, my collaborative project with Murtaza Zaidi, titled 绝对有错误翻译的情书 / طخ تبحم ھتاس ےک ہمجرت طلغ لکلاب / a love letter that must have been mistranslated in parts, was acquired by UCL Special Collections.
My work Messy Little D(f)ictionary (2022) as part of the Toolkits for Counterparts project was reviewed in the Clot Magazine article: Leaky carrier bags in ‘Toolkits for Counterparts’ by Elaine Tam.(2022)
I was an artist in residence for the UCL East Sustainable Physical and Digital Spaces for Education and Research Residency at University College London from 2021 to 2023. From 2020 to 2022, I took part in the Spur Residency hosted by Chaos Magic in Nottingham, UK. I am also confirmed for an upcoming residency with Zaratan Arte Contemporâneain Lisbon, scheduled for 2026.
Email: heyifanfineart@outlook.com
Address: Flat 43 Exbury House, Brenthouse Road, London, London, E96QE, GB
