Artist Profile

Hei Di is a Chinese contemporary painter whose dreamlike oil paintings explore identity, desire, memory, and the fluid boundaries between abstraction and figuration. Having studied in the United States and the United Kingdom, she received her MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 2022. Working intuitively without preparatory sketches, she allows colour, gesture, and layered forms to evolve organically across the canvas, where translucent, fluid surfaces and fragmented bodily imagery give rise to mysterious, shifting figures. Drawing on her cross-cultural experiences and queer identity, Hei Di explores otherness, gender, intimacy, and the tensions between personal freedom and social expectations. Her visual language is informed by cinema, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, transforming these influences into emotionally charged compositions that resist fixed interpretations.