Cross-media artist, theatre and moving-image maker
He Fa, also written Fa He and 何发, is a cross-media artist, theatre and moving-image maker, co-initiator and long-term artistic lead of P4 Theater. His practice moves from photography and installation into participatory theatre, film, sound, writing, and digital archives.
He Fa began with photography rather than theatre. Mountain Beyond Mountains (2012) breaks a landscape into many partial photographs and asks the viewer to move between distance and proximity. That early concern with viewpoint, scale, and bodily position later became central to his live and moving-image work.
Around 2015, He Fa and Zhang Shaohua initiated P4 Theater in Beijing; Zhang Aoshuang took part in its early conception and co-curated the first public performance, Shadow Counterpoint, with He Fa. After P4 left its original space, He Fa continued it as its long-term artistic lead and organiser, working in former factories, offices, boxing gyms, bookstores, private rooms, and online archives.
Across these shifts, the medium changes but the question remains concrete: how does a camera, a room, a rule, or another person alter who may look, speak, act, refuse, or stop? Photography becomes an encounter, theatre becomes a way of arranging relations, film returns to the event after it has happened, and the archive lets the work continue without pretending to close it.
2012 · Photography and C-print light boxes
Artist
Many partial photographs form a landscape at a distance and separate into distinct times, viewpoints, and fragments up close. The Red and White light-box works entered the CAFA Art Museum collection.
2012–2013 · Studio collaboration and 3D printing
Co-founding studio member; market work and design discussion
He Fa helped establish Gewu Studio, worked on its market side, and joined design discussions. Song Bowen created Twelve Water Lamps; He Fa's role belongs to the studio collaboration around it.
2015 to present · Long-term artistic platform
Co-initiator; long-term artistic lead and organiser
P4 brings performances, workshops, open calls, filming, writing, and shared work into changing non-standard sites. The conditions of meeting are not backstage logistics; they shape the work itself.
2016 · Live performance and moving image
Co-curator with Zhang Aoshuang
P4's first public performance used projected images, a fabric screen, voice, repeated instructions, and two performers to move between live bodies and mediated doubles. Its later GIF version carried the event into a looping image form.
2017 · Multimedia and language experiment
Artist / curator
Chinese, English, accent, pinyin, re-hearing, and machine translation repeatedly change one another. Mishearing is not treated as noise to remove, but as the point where a new relation and a new meaning can begin.
2019 onward · One-to-one photography theatre
Co-initiator with Zhang Shaohua
A portrait session becomes a sequence of meetings, choices, pauses, images, objects, and returns. The camera does not simply capture a pre-existing true self; the relation around the camera becomes the work.
2020–2021 · Workshop, rehearsal, and performance
P4U project; organisation and continuation through P4
Recruitment and rehearsal took place in 2020, followed by a public performance at P4 at 19:30 on 2 January 2021. He Fa participated in the live documentation through the 3P group.
2021–2022 · Theatre inside a small office
Producer
Eight makers and fifteen spectators entered the same small office. Iceberg was performed at 19:30 on 1 January 2022; crowding, obstruction, and the difficulty of retreat directly changed the act of looking.
2021–2022 · Social theatre in a boxing gym
Developed with Shen Bolun, Shao Yifan, and collaborators
Combat space, voting, elimination, game rules, mobile light and sound, and non-professional participants turned spectatorship into public judgment. The audience's decision changed what could happen next.
26 August 2023 · Ciyu Bookstore (Middle Theater branch)
Director of Human Surrender and live-event organiser
The ‘final performance before filming wrapped’ began at 19:30 and combined theatre, performance art, live sound, installation, audience interaction, and continuous photography. Its material later entered the film.
2023–2024 · Film, rehearsal, and live performance
Initiator, director, writer, producer, and final film structure
The approximately 156-minute film grew from casting, rehearsal, handheld filming, and The Last Rehearsal in 2023. He Fa shaped the film, while its performances, live sound, texts, and confrontations were generated with many participants.
2025 onward · Method writing
Writer and method developer
AGT names a later vocabulary for how action emerges through positions, rules, spaces, people, and changing relations. It does not replace the earlier works; it reads patterns that became visible across a decade of practice.
A photograph is not only the result of pressing a shutter. Distance, trust, hesitation, staging, and the right to refuse already shape the image.
A room, route, invitation, rule, or camera can decide who sees, who acts, and who must respond. P4 makes those positions visible and changeable.
Once someone speaks toward the lens, moves because it is present, or takes it from another person, filming becomes an action within the event.
In Shoot Self with You, a self cannot appear alone. The word “you” may move among performer, camera operator, partner, audience, and future viewer.
To see another person does not grant ownership of their meaning. Non-sovereign spectatorship asks the viewer to remain close without turning partial understanding into a final verdict.
AGT describes action as something produced among actors, positions, rules, spaces, and situations—not as the expression of one sovereign author.
A participatory work remains open only when people can pause, refuse, withdraw, and decide whether an image or story may continue beyond the encounter.
Film, sound, writing, and searchable archives let an event return in different forms. Continuation matters more than pretending the archive can contain a person completely.
CAFA Art Museum acquired He Fa's two C-print light-box works, Mountain Beyond Mountains — Red and White.
Fafalish turns drift among Chinese, English, accent, pinyin, and machine translation into the material of the work.
Fa He took part in Part One of CCA's 2018 MFA Thesis Exhibition at Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco.
In 2024, Shoot Self with You received four festival selections and reached the Boden International Film Festival's 2nd Quarter semifinals. In 2025, it won Best Feature Film at the Esoteric Film Festival.
Shoot Self with You was selected for Filmmaker Sessions Volume 8.
Lift-Off Global NetworkShoot Self with You reached the semifinals of the Boden International Film Festival's 2nd Quarter 2024 edition.
Boden International Film FestivalShoot Self with You was selected for the Los Angeles Lift-Off Film Festival.
Lift-Off Global NetworkThe organiser's Summer 2024 selection lists Shoot Self with You and names Fa He as director and writer.
Los Angeles Film and Documentary AwardsShoot Self with You was selected for TheaterFilmFest - FIKTIVA.
TheaterFilmFest - FIKTIVAThe festival's 2025 winners page lists Shoot Self with You, Fa He, China as Best Feature Film.
Esoteric Film FestivalHe Fa, also written Fa He and 何发, is a cross-media artist, theatre and moving-image maker, and the long-term artistic lead of P4 Theater.
Around 2015, He Fa and Zhang Shaohua initiated P4 Theater in Beijing. Zhang Aoshuang joined its early conception and co-curated the first public performance with He Fa. He Fa later continued P4 as its long-term artistic lead and organiser.
Begin with Mountain Beyond Mountains for photography, P4 Theater and Real Image for live relations, and Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You for film. AGT gathers a later method vocabulary from that longer practice.
His work asks how cameras, spaces, rules, and other people change the positions of looking and acting. Recurring ideas include imaging with you, non-sovereign spectatorship, action generated through relations, and the right to stop.
Open https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/ for works, biography, chronology, and individual project pages.
Use email 563073224@qq.com, WeChat p4theater03, or Instagram @fa.p4theater.