Hester is a London based filmmaker, photographer and emerging curator with a particular interest in alternative means of documentary storytelling. She completed a BA in Film at the University of Westminster and a MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at UAL.
Working closely with the Chinese and East & Southeast Asian communities in the UK, her artistic and curatorial practice revolves around ideas of memory, historical erasure, migration and complex diasporic experiences. She has worked across mediums of sound, film and photography, including a commissioned project The Fabric of Sound with the ICA as part of the BBC New Creatives.
In 2022, Hester co-founded Sine Screen弦影像, an emerging screening organisation dedicated to showcase independent documentaries from China and across East and Southeast Asia, with the aim to open up discussions around dominant representations of ESEA culture.
Selected Exhibitions & Awards
2024
From (Counter-)Archives to Activation, esea contemporary, Manchester
Three Shadows Photography Award exhibition, Beijing
New Contemporaries group exhibition, Camden Arts Centre, London
2023
New Contemporaries group exhibition, Grundy Gallery, Blackpool
Royal Photographic Society IPE Awards (shortlisted)
Screening as part of Liverpool Independent Biennial, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool
OUTPUT Gallery Photography Open, The Bridewell Studios, Liverpool
Lucky Number 8, The Bomb Factory, London
2022
Current Obsessions, MA graduate show, London College of Communication, 2022
BBC New Creatives showcase, ICA, 2022
Film & curatorial projects
Sine Screen x LSFF | Dreaming in Mother Tongue, 2024
Whose Homeland film season, 2023
BFI London Film Festival shorts programme, 2023
Tomorrow's History shorts programme, Close-up cinema, 2023
Barbican Chronic Youth Film Festival, 2023
A Kind of Queer Utopia - Queer East, 2023
Whose Homeland screening, FACT Liverpool 2022
Social media handle
Ig: @_retseh @sine_screen
Contact: hesteryangishere@gmail.com