Study / Photography
Photography studies
Studied photography at the School of Design, Central Academy of Fine Arts, took part in the Sino-Dutch photography exchange exhibition Tangled, and completed Mountain Beyond Mountains in 2012.
2008—PRESENT / CHRONOLOGY
A chronology from2008 to the present
Photography studies, Gewu Studio, P4 Theater, live projects and Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You, arranged by year. Entries with arrows open project pages.
Photography
Mountain Beyond Mountains
The work recomposes many partial photographs into landscape. Mountain Beyond Mountains — Red and White entered the CAFA Art Museum collection.
Studio
Gewu Studio
In 2012, He Fa co-founded Gewu Studio and served as its artistic director. His work within collaborative projects including Twelve Water Lamps encompassed photography, conceptual development, form exploration and artistic direction.
Theatre
P4 Theater initiated
He Fa and Zhang Shaohua initiated P4 Theater in Beijing. Zhang Aoshuang joined its early conception and co-curated the first public performance, Shadow Counterpoint, with He Fa in 2016.
Study / Collective project
Intermedia advanced-study program
Participated in the advanced-study collective project The Great Chain of Being: Planet Trilogy at the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art.
Study / Fine Arts
Fine Arts MFA-stage study, California College of the Arts
Undertook Fine Arts MFA-stage study at California College of the Arts and participated in the 2018 MFA Thesis Exhibition.
Fafalish
October 2–December 15 at CCA’s Simpson Library, San Francisco. Translation, accent, transcription and machine translation unfold as video and printed text.
Exhibition
YourTube · MFA thesis exhibition
Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, USA.
实像 / Shixiang
Practice began in 2019, followed by a public photography-theatre format in 2020. A collaboration with Zhang Shaohua; He Fa worked on theory, structure, framework and interpretation.
P4 project
Howlers on the Rooftop
Casting and rehearsal took place in 2020, followed by a performance at P4 at 19:30 on 2 January 2021. He Fa participated through P4 organisation and the 3P group’s live documentation.
P4 project
Iceberg
Eight makers and fifteen spectators entered the same small office; the performance took place at 19:30 on 1 January 2022. He Fa served as producer.
P4 project
Purple Action
Duel Club was performed in a boxing space in Chaoyang, Beijing, on 23 October 2021, with six participants and live audience voting.
P4 project
The Last Rehearsal
The Last Rehearsal took place at Ciyu Bookstore (Middle Theater branch) at 19:30 on 26 August 2023. Material from the event later entered Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You.
Film
Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You
The project moved through casting, rehearsal, filming and public performance in 2023, followed by an approximately 156-minute film cut in 2024.
Festival selections
Shoot Self with You
Selected for Filmmaker Sessions Volume 8, Los Angeles Lift-Off Film Festival, Los Angeles Film and Documentary Awards (Summer), and TheaterFilmFest - FIKTIVA.
Festival semifinal
Shoot Self with You
Semifinalist, Boden International Film Festival (2nd Quarter).
Festival award
Shoot Self with You
Best Feature Film, Esoteric Film Festival.
Publication
P4 Theater: A Generative University, a Winding Labyrinth, a Hard Drive Inscribed with Life
Published in Humanities China, Issue 1, 2025, looking back on a decade of P4’s sites, performances, learning and shared life.
After the film
Sound, frames and short films from Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You
Continuing to work with voices, dialogue, film frames, Logic sessions, short films and writing drawn from the completed film.
Current practice / in progress
Xin Gewu
Digital form-making and material exploration continuing from the earlier Gewu Studio practice.
In progress
Continuing to work with the sound, film frames, short films and writing of Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You while preparing new screenings and live versions.
Works, series & projects by year
Dates follow the original work records. Works spanning several years are listed under their starting year; proposals and collective practices are identified separately.
2009
2009Yigui ↗
Two images share a page: sharp repetition beside diffuse superimposition.
Inside and Outside a Vehicle ↗
Streets, vehicles and windows repeat through several different image structures.
Field of View ↗
Roads and buildings repeat in rectangular cells, presenting the city through adjoining views.
Gathering ↗
Tables, rooms and snow-covered ground form circular arrangements of distinct everyday scenes.
The Forbidden City ↗
An architectural outline remains recognizable as details disperse through overlapping images.
2010
2010Sanhetan ↗
Trees, snow and the waterside are assembled across the seams of separate photographs.
Shunan Bamboo Sea ↗
A narrow vertical image joins trees, mountains and mist.
Appearance Arises from the Mind ↗
Mountains, trees and blocks of sky are rejoined within a circular boundary.
Four-Dimensional People ↗
Bodies are assembled from separate views, holding traces of walking, reading and working.
Large Portraits / Portraits ↗
Four portraits unfold alongside three enlarged details of each.
2012
2012Shanshui ↗
From a distance, a landscape. Up close, photographs made at different times and positions.
I ↗
A macro lens travels across the body; individual photographs assemble into an enlarged self-portrait.
Fragments ↗
Dense horizontal bands divide the image into adjoining fragments.
Gewu Studio / Twelve Water Lamps ↗
Water held in form; photography reveals light, surfaces and the spaces between.
Gewu Studio / Products and Spatial Experiments ↗
From Wave Pen, Tantan and Cornices to screens and lighting, an archive of Gewu’s early work across products and art.
Untitled ↗
A complex assembly of more than ten thousand photographs carries the history of repeated work and a decision to stop.
2013
2013Central ↗
Placing the sun among the mountains rearranges a space that photography cannot ordinarily show.
Cocktail ↗
Photographs taken while hiking are ordered by JPEG file size, allowing sky and ground to emerge from a digital sequence.
Wu ↗
Works titled Wu reorganize photographs across landscapes, portraits, coloured points and writing.
2014
2014Lose losing ↗
An image experiment specified for projection on a surface at a variable scale.
Touch touching ↗
Coloured circles fill an image whose scale depends on the space of projection.
2015
2015Hamlet’s Mirror ↗
Performers, projections and screens reflect one another as Hamlet is broken into shifting fragments.
P4 Theater ↗
Spaces, participants, events and documentation change one another through sustained work.
2016
2016Shadow Counterpoint ↗
A time-limited collective production becomes a looping narrative of GIFs and text.
The Great Chain of Being: Planet Trilogy ↗
Participation in a large collaborative project as a member of its advanced-study cohort.
Time Canyon / The Disappearing Tail ↗
A proposed bodily passage through digestion, birth and death, leaving performance time as traces and fragments.
Black Corridor of Spatiotemporal Echoes / Spatial Proposal ↗
A black corridor intended as a necessary passage, extending the experience of space through touch, sound, sight and taste.
Hamlet’s Mirror / Four-screen CAFAM Proposal ↗
From one screen to a four-sided enclosure, extending the displacement between audiences, performers and images.
The Invisible Odyssey / Performance Exhibition Proposal ↗
Bringing a loss of control into an exhibiting group: a proposed series of actions and movements among thirty participants.
Sangou GIF Theatre ↗
A virtual character builds a theatre through repetition, transformation and brief pieces of language.
2017
2017Fafalish ↗
A sentence passes through translation, accent and transcription, becoming a situation between languages.
Fa’s review ↗
A work-sample list preserves four recordings with different lengths and viewpoints.
Long Long Ago / Project Proposal ↗
A proposal for meeting across neighbourhoods and taking turns to host events.
2018
2018YourTube ↗
Screens are connected and people sit together. When does connection become participation?
chinesesamericandream / Instagram Thesis ↗
“Fa He’s thesis is a instagram account.” A short statement redirects the reading of a thesis to a social platform account.
2020
2020Hallucination ↗
A theatre production connecting Shixiang with the emergence of the 3P group.
Cocoon ↗
Sixteen days and nights bring unfamiliar bodies, disagreements and shared work into the theatre.
P4 Screenings: Reflections Between Us ↗
Moving from watching films to sharing personal accounts, the project calls its discussions “self-screening.”
Paper Screening ↗
Drawings are held up on stage as materials, bodies and conversation enter the act of looking.
The Rooftop Howler ↗
From recruitment and rehearsal to performance: tracing how shared work takes form.
2021
2021Purples / Purple Action ↗
Roles, rules, speech and collective judgment become theatre within a jointly constructed fictional world.
How to Eat a Banana? ↗
A familiar act becomes a question to experience together.
A Centrist’s Self-Rescue Guide After the Failure of Love ↗
Audience choices enter a debate about love; He Fa responds through a signed text.
Kill the Rose: 3P—Watching, Performing, Recording ↗
Cameras and writers enter rehearsal, making documentation a form of participation that can affect the event.
Final Solution ↗
Speech, judgment and voting become theatrical actions within a fictional end-of-world assembly.
Iceberg ↗
A small office and fifteen spectators: spatial proximity becomes part of the work.
Saturday Four-Hour Duel Club ↗
Six fighters and a four-hour countdown: votes held by the audience continually change the event.
2022
2022Vortex ↗
A month of rehearsals and changing participants forms the company’s second production.
Romance Theatre ↗
Shared exercises and lived encounters return through documentation to theatre.
World Question Center: Hangzhou Residency and A Common Festival ↗
A month of collective work, from rehearsals at OōEli to a relocated programme on a public lawn.
2023
2023Becoming Wind, Breaking Waves ↗
A personal account by Lifeng calls others into a shared creative process.
Personal Chronicle / PHA ↗
Begin with a personal account, propose a project publicly, and continue the archive through action.
Happiness Kingdom ↗
Citizens emerge from discarded materials, and the characters made by participants continue to act and live.
Breaking the Moon ↗
A collaborative rehearsal process built around changing relationships between roles; directed by Xu Shuai, with He Fa credited as supervising producer.
Human Surrender / Shoot Self with You ↗
A collective film grows through recruitment, rehearsal and public performance. How does shared time enter the edit?
Archival research index · 2026-10-02
How Works Happen: Theatre, Assessment and Agreements for Working Together ↗
Eight encounters with P4 and US-period materials: who acts, how media take part, and how an action becomes a work.